


you belong with me, not swallowed in the sea

by Kaleidoscope



Series: you would be the one i'd come and find [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Amnesia, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Has Issues, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Canon-Typical Violence, Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, Captain America: The Winter Soldier Spoilers, Gen, Hurt Bucky Barnes, Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Natasha Is a Good Bro, Past Brainwashing, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Steve Rogers, Sam Wilson Is a Good Bro, Self-Harm, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Suicidal Thoughts, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-06
Updated: 2015-04-24
Packaged: 2018-03-21 13:01:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3693255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaleidoscope/pseuds/Kaleidoscope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So Steve pulls on that thread.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Story title from "Swallowed in the Sea" by Coldplay

* * *

 

Pt 1

 

So Steve pulls on that thread.

And Natasha was wrong and right and everything in between, but when it comes down to it, Steve didn't exactly have a choice, not when it involves Bucky. _Until the end of the line_ ; it’s a promise he’s going to keep for both of their sakes.

* * *

 

Three days after receiving the dossier from Natasha, Steve and Sam pack their bags and head off on a chase that leads them everywhere but to Bucky. They see evidence of his passing scattered like a fairy tale trail of breadcrumbs, but never Bucky himself. He is always gone by the time Steve and Sam arrive; leaving whisper and rumour, and occasionally a dead body or two behind him. The corpses are all Hydra, or related to them in some manner – many whose signatures are on the forms in the dossier on Bucky – and that fact is both a relief and deeply disturbing to Steve.

He tells Barton about Bucky’s kills when they rendezvous in Italy to collect some new tranquiliser dart guns from the bowman, courtesy of Stark Enterprises, and doesn't get the response he expected. “Just because a dog turns on his masters, doesn't mean he won't bite you, Cap. Don't make the mistake of thinking a common enemy makes you friends…again. Whatever. He’s gone rogue, that’s all.” And then Barton claps him on the back and says, “I'm sorry, Cap. I know what it’s like to…you know.” And Steve stifles the angry denial that springs to his tongue and just nods numbly, summoning up a small, grim smile and clinging to hope.

* * *

 

Steve sends Sam back to the US after five months have passed, and they still are always two steps behind Bucky. Sam says it’s not healthy to keep thinking of him that way; as _Bucky_. Sam says that after reading the dossiers, Steve has to know there is nothing of the James Buchanan Barnes he knew left in the Winter Soldier. Steve disagrees. Steve also thinks Bucky keeps avoiding them because Sam is with him. The thought comes to him late one night, lying sleepless on a ratty bed in a cheap motel room – the world snapping into crystal clear focus and it makes perfect sense. Of course Bucky doesn't want Sam there – but he wouldn't have been leaving a trail behind him if he didn't want to be tracked down at all.

Steve leaves that night, because there is nothing to think about – if there’s even a chance… He scribbles Sam a note: _I have to do this alone. It’s what he wants. I owe you one, Sam. Thanks. Steve_

Sam calls him exasperated and scolding the next day, but Steve is already across the border in Romania by then, and he’s insistent Sam go back to the US. “This is what I’ve decided, Sam. I'm more thankful for what you've done than you'll ever know, but I have to do this. Respect my decision.” Wise man that he is, Sam knows when it’s time to give up. He says it too.

“Fine, Steve. I’ll be on the first plane back to real life tomorrow. I know a lost cause when I see one,” comes through the phone, all irritated and tired, and Steve has been living with Sam for nearly half a year now – he can picture his expression right down to the defeated little slump of Sam’s shoulders. Then Sam adds, “Maybe you need to work on that,” and Steve isn't stupid; he grinds his teeth hard and chooses to pointedly ignore the remark.

Sam wishes Steve luck after that, but all Steve can think is that Bucky isn’t a damned lost cause; hot anger toward Sam – that he is deeply uncomfortable to be feeling – constricting around his bones. Does Sam even realize what a miracle it is that Bucky’s still alive? He should be a picked over pile of remains in an abyss – he should have been dead for decades, and _that_ is a lost cause right there. _But he isn’t._ Bucky is breathing and walking around right now, somewhere in Romania – unless he’s moved on elsewhere – and as long as Bucky keeps breathing, Steve will have hope. He refuses to give up on Bucky. _'Til the end of the line_ he said, and that is what he aims to do. Bucky would do the same for him, were their positions reversed, and Steve _knows_ that.

* * *

 

He sees him in Germany – eating lunch at a café, pasta that Steve wolfs without even tasting, and then there is a glint of light at 2 o’clock on the roof of a building just a block away. It catches Steve’s eye and jerks his head up, fork forgotten in his hand, and _he sees him_. In his battered black garb from what Steve can see of him, nestled into a position that is too exposed – he _has_ to have meant Steve to see – and Steve _can_ see. His hands clasping the rifle, the ends of his hair fluttering in the breeze around his pale face – half-obscured by his rifle – and Steve can imagine the expression on Bucky’s face. That tense little drawn-down shape to his mouth, the crease between his brows, those bright eyes narrowed in concentration.

He stands on instinct, his only thought to go to Bucky, fork still forgotten in his hand, his eyes on Bucky – fixing his position in his mind – and then the street, trying to work out the quickest route to the building. Steve isn’t letting him go; not when he’s this close. He marks where he needs to go, and is taking a step when suddenly pain sears through his shoulder – as if someone has driven a red hot steel rod into his flesh. The impact of the bullet pushes him back on that side – he twists and staggers on the spot, and his hand drops the fork. He clutches the wound – clean through his shoulder and out the other side, he’s relatively sure – and chokes on pain. There is another shot cracking dully out, and Steve ducks, but wherever it went, the shot goes nowhere near him. People are suddenly screaming and scattering, and Steve tells them to _‘get down, get to cover!’_ before he’s forcing himself to run, snatching a dishtowel from a crouching waitresses’ shoulder as he goes, packing it against the wound with a groan through gritted teeth.

Another shot sounds faint on the air and Steve ducks down as he runs, but it’s over his head and off to the right, and he thinks with a thrill of _something_ that renews his strength and makes him run faster, that Bucky missed on purpose. Down the street, vaulting small obstacles and sliding over car bonnets, yelling for people to get out of the way – heading with breath rasping and shoulder screaming daggers of fiery pain, for Bucky. Steve skids to a halt outside of the building’s entrance – non-descript offices, all modern steel and glass, and then barrels through the doors and heads up the stairs because the elevator is too damned slow.

The roof looks empty when he gets there, shoving the door open and running out into the middle. He looks left and right and ahead of him, but Bucky is nowhere to be seen. He jogs forward to where Bucky had been situated, straight ahead from the door. He balances on the roof edge; so precarious as he leans out that one nudge would send him over, but completely unmindful of that. His chest heaves and his heart pounds hard and steady. “Bucky!” He screams his name, scanning the city as far as his eyes will see…and then the rooftop door clicks shut. Steve spins, _realizing_ and cursing himself for being an idiot. Bucky was right there – _right_ there – if only Steve had searched the roof properly with a clear head, instead of all muzzed up with emotion. _Damnit!_

He breaks down the door, but with his shoulder hurt it takes a few seconds longer than usual, and that is all that Bucky needs. By the time Steve charges down the stairs and bursts out onto the street, staring wildly around him, Bucky is gone. He is lost in the myriad of people and cars that mill along the streets, and Steve’s heart cracks and hurts in his chest. He was so close…he had thought…thought that Bucky might actually face him now, with Sam gone. His shoulder roars into full life, yelling its trauma at him, and he clamps his hand to it absently, the dish towel dropped somewhere, he doesn't remember where, sodden with blood and useless.

He goes back up to the rooftop, ignoring the curious crowd now gathering in the lobby of the building, and finds one bullet casing set neatly where Bucky would have been positioned. Steve knows Bucky left it on purpose. What he doesn't know is why.

* * *

 

“I saw him,” he tells Natasha when she calls that night – she ‘heard through the grapevine’ that he'd had to go to the hospital to get patched up. “ _I saw him_.” There is hope and hurt all tangled up in his voice, and he feels like he is trying to tell her something very important with those three words, but he doesn't quite know _what._

“Steve…”

“He’s never let me get this close before. _Never._ ” Steve knows he sounds excited beyond all proportion. He shifts in his seat and grins to himself; sitting alone in his cheap little motel room, in clothes that haven’t been washed in three days, his shoulder strapped up, with a cup of half-cold coffee and an old black and white photo of Bucky on the table in front of him. “This is…this is the best thing that’s happened in...a very long time.”

“…He shot you, Steve,” Natasha says with a careful neutrality. “I’m not sure that’s supposed to be a positive thing.”

“He could've made a kill shot, Natasha. I – I was _right there_ , it should have been _easy_. The first shot, maybe he could’ve choked or just misjudged the wind, I guess. But the second? And the third? There’s no way that Bucky missed three times like that. It wasn't an accident. I know him, Natasha. I _know_ –”

“No. You don’t,” Natasha cuts in crisply, and her tone is like a two by four to the face. Steve jerks the phone away from his ear a little, his grin wiped away. “You knew Bucky Barnes. You do _not_ know the Winter Soldier.”

“No. No, I guess not,” Steve says evenly, because he doesn't know the Winter Soldier, and he doesn't want to argue with Natasha right now. But he thinks to himself that he may not know the Winter Soldier, but he does know that Bucky is still in there. He has to be. The Winter Soldier – _Bucky_ – actively saved Steve’s life, in direct disregard of his mission. Even tortured, brainwashed, and injured, Bucky dragged him out of the water when he could have just walked away and let Steve sink. “He could have taken the shot though.”

“Steve…he’s unstable right now. Highly unstable. He had only ever been taken out of cold storage out for very short periods of time before, has undergone repeated memory wipes, suffered a great deal of trau–”

“That’s enough!” He nearly snarls it through the phone, so angry it takes him by surprise. He yanks himself back into line harshly, swearing and sighing to himself, rubbing his forehead with a hand. “I know what they did to him, Natasha. I read the file.”

There is a pause before she speaks again, as if she’s reaching for calm in much the same way Steve is. “Of course, Steve,” she says smooth and coolly soothing. “My point is merely that we don’t know how badly his ability to function may have been affected by his mental state. He is not –”

“The man I knew,” Steve finishes shortly. He stares at the picture of Bucky on the table, a bitter, angry smile tightening his lips. “I know that, Natasha. But thank you for the _reminder_.”

“I was going to say: he is not likely to last much longer. Assassins like him…they are not…programmed to function for long periods of time.”

“What do you mean, not last much longer?” Steve’s fingers tense around the phone and the case creaks warningly. Natasha sounds like she is shrugging; flippant and easy in her words, and as always it makes Steve a little sad for her that such topics are so familiar. This time it also makes him sick that they are talking about _Bucky._

“He’s likely to become more and more erratic. His level of self-care is probably very basic – if he gets wounded he won’t go to a hospital, of course, but unlike most fugitives he won’t go even if infection sets in. He may not be eating well. He – he is designed to kill, not take care of himself, Steve. And combined with his…confused…mental state, he shouldn’t be able to avoid you much longer. As long as one of the targets he seems to be taking out don’t take _him_ out first.” Silence falls, and Steve’s mind races. This is potentially good, but also potentially very bad, because the thought of Bucky being ‘taken out’ is not one that Steve can afford to dwell on, and it’s crowding out everything else in his head right now. He thinks of Bucky dying of an infection that could be cured easily. He wonders how much weight he’s lost. But whether good or bad, it’s indisputably horrifying, and Steve wants to scour his brain of the scenarios running rampant through it.

“Why didn't you tell me earlier?”

“You read the files, Steve. It was all in there to see, plain as day.” Natasha is apologetic, but Steve is furious and frantic with an urgent kind of fear now. He should have seen it. Why didn't he see it? Why did he put the pieces together and not come up with anything like that? It’s simple; he read the files looking for _Bucky_ – for evidence of his friend, lost somewhere in the Winter Soldier – and he read the files horrified by what Bucky went through, as a friend. Natasha read the file and saw facts.

“I have to go,” he lies to her, guilty and sick to his stomach, and it shows in his voice. “I’ll be in touch.”

Natasha sends him an email the next day. _‘Alexei Petrikov,’_ it reads, along with an address in Moscow, and: _‘Maybe you’ll get there first.’_  Steve knows it means that she thinks this man will be next on Bucky’s list of personal vengeance. And Natasha’s best guess is more than Steve’s working with right now; the way he’s going it seems he’ll never catch up with Bucky unless Bucky allows it. And right now Steve doesn't feel he can wait for that to happen. He’s scared for Bucky. So he packs up his one, meagre bag of belongings and clears out of Germany.


	2. Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Note: Danger to a child

* * *

 

Pt 2

 

Moscow is cold and beautiful, but Steve’s accommodation is still some low-end dump, because he’s not wasting good money on what for him is just a place to sack out for a few hours here and there, and sit around staring at a screen the rest of the time. And also because it’s close to Petrikov’s house; the man has come down in the world, and lives in a decidedly bad area of the city. He managed to find Alexei Petrikov easily, thanks to Natasha’s emailed address, and the next two weeks are reconnaissance – hence the odd sleeping hours. Reconnaissance doesn’t leave much time for sleep; it’s important to identify all the possible variable people, and learn patterns and routines, and what the potential deviations from routine could most likely be. Although in Steve’s case, he’s not really watching Petrikov, as much as he is just waiting for Bucky.

But Steve read the dossier, and so he can’t help watching Petrikov as though he really was his target. Petrikov; an old, frail man, who was one of the head scientists working on the Winter Soldier project throughout the latter half of the sixties. Petrikov, with a still-living wife and three grown children, who was determined to measure the Winter Soldier’s limits of pain, endurance, strength, and more. Petrikov, who made the Winter Soldier hurt and bleed beyond anything he had experienced up until that point, and Steve wonders if Bucky _remembers_. Petrikov, who had noted in the file that in ’67 the Winter Soldier had gotten confused part way through a mission. Had kept asking for his mother – she’d died of tuberculosis in ’32. Had said, _‘where’s Steve?’_

Bucky had started to _remember_ , and Petrikov had wiped it all away to nothing again, and Steve could kill the man for it. Bucky had been wiped many times – sometimes after each mission – but that was the one and only time he had ever remembered someone. Up until the small notation – one of the very last in the folder – that says, _‘recognised target as familiar. Initiated total scrub. No apparent memory retention.’_ The signature is illegible. When Steve looks through the Bucky’s folder, he is unnerved by how he reacts. He’s unaccustomed to feeling such rage, such pure, driving hatred, and it feels _wrong_ , like worms beneath his skin, and he understands why Natasha warned him – but he needed to know. Not knowing would have been a betrayal of Bucky, and Steve will be damned if he ever fails Bucky again.

So he commits what the Winter Soldier underwent to memory, and watches Petrikov’s house – a full view handily provided by little S.H.I.E.L.D cameras that he’s set up in unobtrusive places, the feed linking up to both a tablet and his phone. He’s glued to the screen, searching for Bucky in every angle and frame, _waiting._ He doesn’t eat enough, checks his tranq gun obsessively, and scripts his first meeting with Bucky in his head, over and over. He’s acting like a girl fussing over her first date, he thinks one afternoon, lying in bed at the hotel a block over from Petrikov’s house and trying to sleep, and it’s ridiculous because Bucky’s likelier to shoot him than kiss him. And then all Steve’s brain can think about is kissing Bucky; and it’s a familiar downward spiral through lust and shame and _disgust_ at himself, and then if he keeps going with this line of thought there'll be a temporary surrender to the lust before the intense guilt saturates him, and he swears to never do it again.

He could be a skinny little 5’5” Brooklyn kid again, because he feels exactly the same way about Bucky as that kid did, over seventy damn years ago. He loves him, all twisted up in confusion and a good dollop of shame – because even though he knows it’s okay to be a homosexual now, old habit is hard to break. But he loves Bucky, despite the shame. Steve Rogers has _always_ loved Bucky Barnes. Best friends, just like brothers, and then puberty hit and he started to love him in another, new way too. Steve glances at the tablet on the bedside table and still sees nothing. The surveillance cameras have built-in detection software anyway; they’ll spot Bucky if he doesn’t. So Steve shuts his eyes, and thinks of kissing Bucky, guilt and shame hot in the back of his mind, old lessons telling him that this is _wrong_.

And in a shitty hotel room in Russia, Captain America palms his dick and bites his lip, and slow and dirty brings himself off thinking of the Winter Soldier’s mouth hot and swollen ripe against his, tongue dipping and teasing, and his hand replacing Steve’s on his dick, squeezing and sliding and slicked with his own spit. No – _no_ , Steve thinks of _Bucky’s_ mouth, and the way those sulky lips curve into a generous grin, and the sparkling eyes that got hard and shadowed beneath during the war, and the way he said Steve’s name so soft and earnest when he was being serious, and the way he had _smelt_ … And if the hand Steve imagines curling firm and greedy around his dick is metal, well, that’s Bucky too.

It has to be. Because Steve can’t let Bucky go again.

* * *

 

He hears via Natasha that the Winter Soldier – her words, not his and he thinks in his head _Bucky_ , _Bucky_ – is heading toward Russia, and time begins to slowly wind down. It takes five days that seem to stretch on forever, before Steve just happens to see a medium-height figure in a hoodie appear on one of the street view cameras as he drinks his morning coffee, and there’s something in the walk that’s…familiar. He squints at the person. The hood is up, hiding his face, but a few strands of longish dark hair flutters outside the bounds of it in a way that makes him think of...and the boots – he knows those boots he's sure…

And then the figure turns, smoothly sliding a gun from a holster into one gloved hand while the other pushes back the hood, and the world tips unbalanced, everything skewing wrong but _right_ because it’s _Bucky_. Steve's breath shudders in and he stiffens in his chair, hand knocking his coffee and it floods the table and drips down on the floor. He ignores it, simply snatching up the tablet and staring at the man on the screen. _Bucky_. Hair brushing down to his shoulders and past now, straggled and lank and his eyes are worse than blank - they’re _seething_ with pain. He's staring right at the camera. As if he's looking through it, at -

“Steve,” he mouths and - _why would he say that?_ \- and then he shoots out the tiny camera that Steve had hidden in the streetlight outside Petrikov's home, and the screen goes black. Steve drops the tablet to the table, uncaring of the coffee puddles it lands in.

_Shit_.

Steve barely stops to grab his shield before he’s out the door of his hotel room, tearing down the hallway and _bursting_ like a cannonball through the window at the end, tucking and rolling onto the street four stories down. It takes Steve eleven seconds that he counts under his breath to get to Petrikov’s house. He stutters to a halt there on a patch of pavement where Bucky had stood just seconds before, and realises belatedly that he is in socks, grey workout pants, and a spaghetti stained white tee-shirt. He almost wants to laugh.

Not exactly his suit, but it'll have to do.

The door to Petrikov house is open, and Steve goes in quiet and careful; he almost wants to just leave Bucky to do what he needs to do, but he wants to watch his back. Just in case. Down a shabby hallway carpeted by a threadbare rug, following the sound of Bucky's voice speaking in what sounds like Russian, icy and brimming with hate. It's Bucky and yet it's not, and Steve can't help the shivers that go down his spine because it sounds so wrong to hear those words and that tone in Bucky's voice. He hefts the shield and edges into the doorway, looking into a lounge.

Bucky stands off to the left, stance strong and hair falling forward to hide his face, and Petrikov is on the floor on his knees in front of Bucky. Hands clasped together. Begging desperately. But it's not what Steve thought; it's not the scene of dubiously righteous vengeance he'd anticipated. Bucky's gun presses into a child's temple. A girl. She must be about six years old; old enough to be scared out of her wits. There are small puddles on the floor at her feet, and her pants legs are wet down the insides. A woman who must be her mother stands frozen in the corner of the lounge, face contorted, tears tracing her cheeks and Russian spilling in a hoarse whisper from her lips, hands clasped together as if in prayer.

Steve's stomach flips sickly, and he darts forward without thinking – arm flung out and shield fitted to it harmlessly, other hand empty and offered palm up like a sacrifice. “Bucky! _No!_ ” Because if he shoots this child in the head, in front of Steve…Steve can’t even contemplate it without feeling like he is going to shake apart from the inside out. Bucky's metal hand dives into his hoodie, and rips out an Uzi, liquid-fast movements, his head snapping to Steve, hair flying around his face, and then back to Petrikov, begging on the floor. Bucky levels the second weapon at Steve's face, and his metal arm is perfectly steady but Steve can see his human hand is trembling slightly. Seeing that ever-steady snipers hand trembling rocks Steve to the core; Bucky must be in a bad way to be shaking like an old man.

His eyes flick to Steve for an assessing second, before apparently classifying him as less important than Petrikov. “Drop the shield.” His voice is dispassionate and rough, slow as if he hasn’t spoken English for too long, and Steve drops the shield without hesitation, holding both hands up a little, trying to communicate that he is not a threat.

“Please let the girl go. You're scaring her,” he tells Bucky as calm as he can be. Bucky stares at him as though he doesn't comprehend the idea. His eyes are bruised beneath with sleeplessness, his skin pallid and clammy, those full lips Steve had fantasised about just days ago now chapped and pale. There is a fragility to the way he stands; dangerous still but brittle with it, not the same force he had been in DC – pure brutal _force_ , as though he’d been invincible. Steve stares at him helplessly; at the hollowness to his cheeks and the sore at the corner of his mouth, the lank way his hair falls – it hurts to look at him. “The child. Don’t hurt her, Bucky, pl–”

“Don't call me that!” Bucky snarls and his voice slurs and shakes, the gun pointed at Steve wavering in his grip as he vibrates with fury and _confusion_ , pain soaking dark in his eyes. Steve jerks in a breath. He doesn’t think it’s a good sign that Bucky – the Winter Soldier – flinches from the name.

“Okay – Okay then. I won’t. Just…please let the girl go.”

“Why?” A dully curious voice, Bucky wetting his lips and cocking his head slightly as his eyes flick back from Petrikov to Steve. The gun nudges unintentionally firmer into the girl’s temple and she whimpers, standing there in her pink puffy jacket and urine-wet jeans, dirty blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail that looks as if it has been half wrenched out and a small bruise flowering on her cheek – Steve winces, horrified – and a gun at her head. “ _Why?_ ” Bucky growls, and the girl’s whimpering becomes a sob and Bucky’s eyes flash with anger and bewilderment and _hurt_ and – “ _Shut up_ ,” he tells the child with no trace of empathy or compassion whatsoever, and Steve wants to cry as he stares at the Winter Soldier, and goddamnit, everyone else was _right_.

“It’s not her fault, what he did to you. She – she shouldn’t be punished for what he did to you. She’s a child. Please. Don’t do this.” Steve begs calm and steady, because he doesn’t want to set Bucky off, and the girl cries softly, in unison with her mother – who still stands transfixed in the corner although her whole body seems to strain toward her child – and Petrikov gives a constant stream of desperate, pleading Russian. Steve stares at Bucky. If he shoots the girl…Steve knows that he has killed children before as the Winter Soldier, but to read dispassionate files, and to witness his best friend murder a little girl in front of him, feel like very different things right now.

“Please. I know that you know it’s not the right thing to do. I _know_. _Please._ ” Steve longs to say _‘please, Buck,’_ – the nickname as natural on his tongue as breathing – but he fears using the name after Bucky’s reaction to it will just make things worse. So instead he just falls silent and stares helplessly into the Winter Soldier’s bruised, hurt-filled eyes, searching for something – _anything_ – of Bucky in them.

“I don’t know anything about the right thing,” Bucky says in a small, wounded voice, and then swings his arm and puts a bullet through Petrikov’s head.

* * *

 

The next few seconds move very fast. The girl’s mother runs to her child and snatches her up, staggering terrified for the door, and Steve lunges forward, putting himself between Bucky and the two civilians. Bucky spins and the Uzi comes up as if on instinct, and Steve doesn’t wait to see if he’ll pull the trigger or not. He slams into Bucky, tackling him hard and sending them both flying back into the thin wall and crashing straight through it into a bedroom.

Steve ends up on top of Bucky who lies on a pile of crumbling plaster and debris, both of them wedged up against the broken bed, and Bucky gasping and whining below him like an animal, dazed and hurting. The Uzi is lost somewhere in their mad tumble and roll, but Bucky still has the pistol in his human hand, Steve is pretty sure. Bucky struggles under Steve, trying to get out, but it’s panicked and ineffective. His metal arm is wedged under the bed, which has fallen on it, and Bucky’s chest heaves under Steve and his eyes are wide - blue like the sea and bloodshot to hell, his tongue running over his lips as he thrashes against the hands Steve pins to his shoulders.

Steve stares at him. Bucky right there, right here, in his hands, and there’s a feeling swelling in his chest that is choking him, it’s so _much_. “ _Buck…_ ”

Bucky _snarls_ , teeth baring and nose crinkling, eyes narrowed and human arm rising and Steve can see the pistol in his hand and he cracks his head forward into Bucky’s nose with a silent apology. He hasn’t come this far just to fail. But it hurts to feel the _crack_ of Bucky’s nose and see the blood come leaking out, shockingly dark on his pale skin. It hurts when Bucky grunts in pain. Steve’s forearm lashes out and knocks Bucky’s human arm down and away, so the pistol – still clutched in Bucky’s white-knuckled hand – is pointing away from them both when Bucky reflexively pulls the trigger. Bucky _screams_ at him, spitting out words in Russian that Steve doesn’t understand in the slightest. “остановить меня так называть!Я не он!”Bucky’s face clouds in confusion and then clears sharp and icy, and this time when he speaks it is in English: “ _Stop calling me that!_ ”

“It’s your name!” They’re grappling on the floor, gasping and panting and _furious,_ and either one of them should have badly injured the other by now, if they’d been trying to, but Steve hasn’t been, and Bucky… Well, maybe everyone else hadn’t been right after all. “James…Buchanan…Barnes…”

“ _Stop!_ ” Bucky jerks and _wrenches_ from his left side with the metal arm, and the bed goes flipping up into the air and crashing down again, as if it weighed no more than a sack of potatoes. “ _Stop it!_ ”  Freed, Bucky’s arm rolls forward at the shoulder before jerking back again into place, and the arm makes a whirring sound, fingers flexing against Steve’s waist. Steve swears internally, but just keeps his eyes fixed to Bucky’s.

“It’s who you are, Buck,” he says gently, and Bucky’s face screws up, and his breath shudders out on a sob. He flips under Steve like an eel and gets his legs up somehow, booting Steve _hard_ and shoving with his metal arm. Steve goes flying across the room just like the damn bed, making a fair dent in an undamaged section of wall when he hits. He scrambles up to his feet, and Bucky’s got the pistol pointed at Steve’s head, backed up against the wall opposite Steve. They face off across the room, silent except for their rasping breaths. The blood from Bucky’s nose drips sluggish and dark off his chin onto the floor.

“Codename: Winter Soldier,” Bucky says thickly, and his hand is _shaking_ , he is shaking, all over, slumping back against the wall, his metal hand pressing to his abdomen, hunching in on himself as if a wound is paining him. Steve shakes his head, because Bucky’s remembered before, and he can remember again – if he isn’t already beginning to now, despite his denials. Bucky whimpers and jabs the gun at Steve again, and Steve wonders if he should bring Bucky down now – he can do it; the state Bucky’s in, he’s no real threat, even with the gun – or if he should try to talk him down gentle.

“I know.” He goes for gentle, his voice soothing and easy. “I read the dossier, Buck.”

Bucky flinches as if Steve has struck him, and his eyes are pure _Bucky_ and pure horror, and his throat bobs as he swallows convulsively. He’s dry and scratchy when he speaks, voice cracking and breaking to pieces. “Steve. _No._ ” As if Steve reading the file and knowing the contents is more than Bucky can bear, and Steve’s heart aches for the man huddled against the wall opposite. Bucky slowly sinks down to a crouch, wall bracing him, face dead white except for the blood, and those bloodshot sea-green eyes that belong to _Bucky_ and not the Winter Soldier. “I am not _him_.” Bucky’s still holding up the gun, but its wobbling now, dropping and raising as his muscles start to tire. He must be hurt badly, somewhere under those clothes, Steve thinks, for him to be like this. But despite that Steve is feeling hope, scorching hot in him and radiating clean like hot summer days in Brooklyn, when they were young and Bucky’s grin was brighter than anything.

“I know, Bucky.”

“No,” Bucky says, shaking his head, mouth tipping up into an odd little smile, human hand dropping to the ground – still holding the gun – as he crouches there. “No, you really don’t.” And then the smile is gone and Bucky blinks at Steve. “I can’t be him. He would never…”

The Winter Soldier stares at Steve, and all Steve can see is Bucky, and he is rooted to the floor like he’s paralysed, because _no_. “I’m a monster,” Bucky whispers in a cracked voice, eyes sliding from Steve’s to the floor. Bucky’s lips press and fold together, frightened and sad, and Steve still knows him well enough after everything to know when Bucky makes the decision; to know the little not-smile twist his mouth gets. “I’m the Winter Soldier.”

“Bucky…” Steve prepares himself to have to shift away for a shot – prepares himself for the pain, because Bucky will likely clip him – thinking that he _knows_ , but he _doesn’t._ Bucky doesn’t shoot him. Steve was _wrong._

“Я сожалею.” Bucky drops his head back against the wall like a surrender, and his eyes close as he lifts the gun and shoves the muzzle into his own mouth.

Steve is frozen; like being under the ice again, the desperate cold soaking through him, agony. Unbearable. Helpless. “ _Please._ ” And Steve means it like he’s never meant anything before, desperation grinding in his body, the need to _stop this_ surging like an ocean under his skin. “Please Buck, don’t. _I need you._ Don’t leave me again. I can’t – can’t lose you again. Not like the train. Not _again_.” Steve’s voice breaks, and there are tears on his face he thinks, but nothing matters except the crumpled figure with the gun in his mouth and his shaking finger on the trigger. Bucky flutters his eyes open, and Steve wants to resurrect and murder every single damned person who put that horror behind Bucky’s eyes. And he hates himself a little bit too, when he says, “Don’t you _dare_ do this to me. _Bucky._ Bucky, _don’t do this to me._ _Please._ ”

Bucky makes a horrible, gargling sound around the gun, and he _shakes_ as if he is trying to fight against what Steve has said, but can’t. Thank god,he _can’t_. The muzzle of the gun is gleaming with bloodied saliva as Bucky draws it from between his cracked, pale lips, and drops his hand to the ground. His mouth shapes and twists wordlessly and bitter as though he is trying to speak, and then he lets his head loll forward, saying nothing. Like a broken doll as Steve kneels down beside him and carefully uncurls Bucky’s fingers from around the gun, replacing the gun with his own hand – folding it warm around Bucky’s cold one.

“It’s okay, Bucky. It’s okay. I’m – I’m going to help you. Everything is going to be – everything is going to get better. I promise. Scout’s honour.” Steve smiles a little, other hand very carefully coming up to push Bucky’s hair back from his face, so that he can see Bucky’s expression. Bucky flinches as if he expects pain, but allows Steve to tuck his hair behind one ear with clumsy little motions, just sitting and breathing with his hand slack in Steve’s. It’s as if he just…isn’t there anymore, his eyes gone empty. It worries Steve.

“Buck?”

Bucky shuts his eyes and doesn't speak.

* * *

 


	3. Part 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Note: Suicidal ideation

* * *

 

Pt 3

 

“How long has he been non-responsive?”

“I – I don’t know…half an hour, maybe?” Steve casts a worried eye over at Bucky, who sits motionless and gone behind the eyes on the edge of the hotel bed. He’s like a statue except for the breathing, and Steve doesn't know what the hell he’s going to do now if Bucky keeps it up – they need to move on from here, really, back to the US where they can try to get Bucky help to undo the brainwashing, maybe. But it was hard enough getting Bucky _here_ let alone out of the country without a passport. Steve needs to know what is happening in Bucky’s head, to have some idea if this was more likely to be a natural response, or something deliberately placed in Bucky’s brain by Hydra to shut him down. And he can’t call Natasha because he knows she won’t approve of how he’s keeping Bucky – unbound and _dangerous_ , in her opinion.

So Steve had called Banner; the only person he trusts right now who knows anything at all about medicine and biology, even if he isn't precisely the right type of doctor.

“It could be just the emotional trauma. He may have gone into a dissociative state, to try to protect his mind from the intense mental toll of the situation. Or possibly he’s beginning to remember more, and it’s causing him to be overwhelmed by the memories, and retreat from reality? Or it could be physical shock, of course. You said he’s not injured?” They talk while Steve watches Bucky intently, drinking in every last battered inch of him. Bucky is alive, with Steve, and not trying to kill him – this has to be considered progress, Steve thinks, his gaze never drifting from Bucky’s slumped figure.

Ten minutes on the phone with Banner and Steve is marginally reassured, and has an immediate plan at least. Shower Bucky, treat any wounds as best Steve can, feed him, and put him to bed. It seems so simple in his head; far less so in reality. He tells Bucky what he’s going to do, and asks if that’s all right, but Bucky doesn't show any sign of even hearing him. When he presses his thumb to Bucky’s chin to draw his lip down slightly and have a look at the sore at the corner of his mouth, Bucky opens his mouth wide. Obediently, teeth bared and eyes terrified, dragging in frantic, ragged breaths through his nose, shoulders heaving.

Steve remembers then the descriptions of the memory wipes in the dossier, and realises Bucky’s opening his mouth for the rubber shock guard. That he’s expecting the pain of having his brain scoured raw and blank by the machine Steve has seen pictures of. Steve jerks back from Bucky as though he’s been burnt, and once Steve’s touch leaves his skin, Bucky closes his mouth with a click of teeth. Steve stares at Bucky, panicking inwardly, because it suddenly seems like anything he does is potentially going to remind Bucky of _something_ terrible that Hydra inflicted on him. He has never been so angry.

“It’s – it’s…” Steve searches for a way to reassure Bucky, but there isn’t one. There are no words that Bucky can trust. “It’s gonna be okay, pal,” he says at last, voice saturated with the kind of casual fondness Bucky had spoken to Steve with, when they were younger. Bucky looks up at him, blinking owlishly, words hovering on his lips that he doesn’t spill. Steve smiles at him, small and strained. “Now let’s get you into the shower, huh?” Bucky shakes and hyperventilates but doesn’t resist when Steve awkwardly strips him down to naked, scarred flesh. Bucky is far too thin – half-starved and filthy, and Steve thinks of Natasha’s words. Bucky clearly hasn’t been taking care of himself; he looks like a POW. He stands perfectly stock-still except for the trembling as Steve eyes his naked body quickly for injuries; every muscle in that thin form drawn tight, Bucky seemingly bracing himself for the pain he thinks is coming – Steve can see the expectation of it on his face.

He lets Steve lead him like a lamb, with stiff, halting steps. He walks like a weapon that’s been broken, not a person at all. The bathroom door clicks shut behind them when Steve nudges it with his foot, and Bucky’s eyes flutter at the sound – he jerks beneath Steve’s gentle grasp on his shoulder, and his hand reaches for a weapon that isn’t there. He’s panicked when his hand touches only the bare skin of his hip, and his eyes turn terrified and lost on Steve, searching for answers. Steve grabs his hand, and squeezes. “It’s okay. It was just the door. I just shut the door. Okay? You’re safe.” Bucky stares at him empty and bewildered, like a child; the fear seeping away slowly and replaced by nothing. Nothing at all. He doesn’t turn violent though, which is something Steve is on full alert for, and to be honest, _expects_. Despite himself, Steve wonders if Bucky will be this empty, pliable automaton forever. If this is all that’s left of James Buchanan Barnes.

Steve climbs fully-clothed into the shower first, and gets the water just right, while Bucky stands against the wall with hunched shoulders and watches him with a dull sort of suspicion. Steve has noticed the way he doesn’t even bother to cover himself for modesty’s sake, and it’s not because he’s comfortable around Steve, like in their Howling Commando days when seeing each other in various states of nudity was pretty well unavoidable, sometimes. It’s because only people are modest, and Bucky obviously doesn’t consider himself a person. “Come on.” Steve beckons him into the shower, and Bucky stares at Steve, and then the shower, and shakes his head – a small, frightened little gesture. It takes ten minutes to talk Bucky into the shower, and when he finally lets Steve pull him in – holding both Bucky’s wrists and tugging gently – his eyes are wide and he looks more terrified child than assassin.

Then Steve shifts them, and the spray hits Bucky’s shoulders and back – it’s good water pressure, and hot enough to have filled the small bathroom with billows of steam – and a shocked, blissful moan drags out of Bucky’s throat. He sags forward into Steve for a second, forehead knocking against Steve’s shoulder, and his breath is hard and ragged, his hands clutching at Steve’s arms before he staggers upright under the water again, metal hand reaching out to one side and bracing against the shower wall. Bucky’s lips part as he sucks in a long breath, and his eyes are starry-dazed. Steve hovers, worried Bucky’s going to fall, or freak out, but he just shifts – muscles sliding brutally elegant beneath his scarred skin – and puts his head beneath the stream of water. It saturates his long, matted tangles of hair, plastering it flat to his skull, and draws trails through old blood and dirt on his face.

A waterfall running over Bucky’s face and off his chin, droplets sparkling heavy in his eyelashes as he blinks at Steve, little sprays of water pushed out by his breath as it runs over his lips in a flood, and he says, “Steve. Steve it’s so _hot_ ,” in a wondering voice. “ _The water’s hot_.”

“D-do you like it?” Steve asks half-strangled with a ridiculous, buoyant, choking happiness at hearing Bucky speak. It’s a stupid question because he already knows the answer, but it’s a _safe_ question precisely because of that. And one corner of Bucky’s mouth slips up in a funny little smile, and he nods once.

“Yeah. Yeah, I do. I don’t remember when… It’s always so _cold…_ ” Bucky’s odd smile fades, and there’s something in his eyes that looks like ice and dead things. He’s silent again after that, but he allows Steve to wash his hair with hotel shampoo. Steve tries not to get shampoo in Bucky’s eyes but fails, and it makes him want to go find somewhere to sit down quietly and cry when Bucky doesn’t even _try_ to wipe away the bubbles that make his left eye bloodshot and red-rimmed, just stands there blinking painfully until Steve realises. It’s only something little, but it’s so representative of everything Hydra has taken away from Bucky that it breaks Steve, something in his chest twisting and cracking. He turns away from Bucky, eyes watering fiercely, and has to breathe a moment before he trusts himself to speak.

“You know how to use the flannel then?” Steve checks, because he’d needed to demonstrate that to Bucky, who has probably only ever been perfunctorily cleansed by hands other than his own, and that just makes the pain in Steve’s chest _worse._ Bucky meets Steve’s eyes as he rubs the bar of soap on the flannel until it soaps up, and then rubs the flannel in a firm sweep across his abdomen. Steve is guiltily glad that he feels too horrified and sickened by what has been done to Bucky to be aroused – because if not for that, he _would_ be. And it feels like taking advantage, to look at Bucky and want him like that. Wrong. Steve staggers out of the shower then, sopping wet and wanting to come apart. “Good. You…just wash yourself. I’m going to – to get some dry clothes on, and find you something to wear too, all right?”

Bucky stares at him blankly, the cloth roaming absently over his body, and then nods once. “Don’t go anywhere,” Steve adds with a smile that feels like glass on his lips. He dresses fast, leaving the door to the bathroom open, and then sits down at the table at an angle where he can see Bucky’s shape through the steam. He watches Bucky shift and move beneath the water through the steam – dark, wet hair, glimpses of pale, scarred flesh, and the silver glint of the arm – and wipes away his tears with the back of his hand. Bucky. Bucky – standing in his shower nearly catatonic but _alive,_ and so far at least, not showing any desire to complete his mission and take Steve out. Steve doesn’t know what to do. It feels utterly surreal.

Bucky stays in the shower until the water goes cold.

He dresses himself in the sweatpants and dark blue tee-shirt Steve gives him, running his human hand over the soft fabric curiously, movements slow but elegant and sure. The clothes hang off him – he’s only four or five inches shorter than Steve, but he’s skinny as heck. Bucky won’t let Steve dry his hair properly, or comb the tangles out of it, and it hangs in snarls, dripping wet on his shoulders. He eats most of the over-priced food in the cheap little hotel room fridge and cupboard – snack bars and cereal mostly – taking huge bites and chewing fast, like an animal, watching Steve intently from behind his hair. When Steve suggests they try to sleep, meaning really that he wants _Bucky_ to sleep, Bucky crouches down in a corner of the room facing the door instead of taking the bed as Steve suggests. Steve winces, but isn’t surprised. This is something Bucky had done sometimes during the war – after his capture ad time with Zola, at least; Steve can’t speak to how he was before.

“What’re you doing, Bu– …pal?”

“I need a weapon,” Bucky says barely audible and robotic, eyes on the door.

“I can’t give you one. You understand that, right?”

Bucky wraps his arms around his knees, and pillows his cheek on them, looking up at Steve with sea-hazed eyes. He looks so young, and nearly sweet but for the blankness saturating him. “I won’t kill you, Steve.”

“It’s not me I’m worried about,” Steve says grimly, once he’s choked down the lump of emotion in his throat.

Bucky says nothing to that, just repeats that he needs a weapon. Over and over, in a soft voice that slowly becomes more insistent and frantic. Steve gives him the tranq gun in the end, and Bucky accepts that compromise with a grudging, sullen little expression that seems _human_ , and settles in under the blanket Steve drapes around him. He watches the door nearly unblinkingly, while Steve sits on the bed and watches _him_ while researching the internet for information on PTSD, as has been his habit lately. As always, he finds little that he thinks he could use successfully to help Bucky; everything is so modern and confusing and Steve doesn’t understand it.

Bucky finally nods off at around 3am. The tranq gun stays clutched in his metal hand and his breath comes just as silent as before, but Steve sees how his eyes slip shut and the tension melts from his body. Steve follows him into sleep – he can’t stay awake for ever, and if Bucky wants to kill Steve, or leave while he sleeps, then…so be it. Steve dreams of the train and the gorge, and the way Bucky screamed as he’d fell, and wakes feeling sick to his stomach and exhausted in a way that sleep can’t fix.

Bucky sleeps on like the dead, still a huddled ball in the corner with the tranquiliser gun in hand, and Steve goes shopping after half an hour of agonising over whether he can leave Bucky alone. He leaves the do not disturb sign hung on the outside of the hotel room door, and a note for Bucky pinned to the inside of the door, but he’s not sure Bucky will notice the note, or be able to read it in his current state.

When he gets back after an hour with arms full of groceries, Bucky is nowhere to be seen, and Steve’s stomach sinks like lead. He searches the hotel room just in case, and comes crotch-to-muzzle with a gun when he opens the wardrobe door. Bucky is curled up on the floor, wide awake and staring at Steve with huge eyes as he points the gun unwaveringly at Steve. The note is clutched slightly crumpled in his hand, and the gun is not the tranq gun Steve left him with, but one Steve had in a locked case under the bed.

“You left,” Bucky says accusingly, gun shifting up to fix on Steve’s chest. Steve stays very still, not wanting to startle the other man, smiling apologetically.

“I’m sorry. I left a note for you. And I brought back food.” He pauses. Smiles at Bucky hopefully. “Are you hungry?”

“I’m…hungry,” Bucky says as though he’s trying the words out, as if it’s a question and not an answer. A little crinkle draws between his brows.

“Have you ever had scrambled eggs?” Steve isn’t much of a cook, but scrambled eggs is something he’s always been capable of. He remembers making it for Bucky on the mornings after they’d gone out drinking and dancing – Steve going home at midnight by himself if Bucky had a girl that seemed amenable to more than just a dance, while Bucky staggered in the door with kiss-stained mouth and unbuttoned jacket nearer dawn. And Steve would make Bucky scrambled eggs the next morning, while he snored exhausted and peaceful on the couch. The memory is sharp as a photograph in Steve’s mind. Bucky frowns.

“I don’t remember.” His eyes are feverishly bright and glassy as he stares up at Steve. “But I remember _you_. Your – your name, and – you were important to him. To – to _me_.” Bucky lowers the gun and squints at Steve, face all twisting as he concentrates on whatever threads of memory trail loose and ragged in his mind. “But I can’t remember _why_. I can’t…can’t…” Bucky drops his head and drags at his hair in frustration, pained growls escaping his gritted teeth. “There’s – there’s _nothing there._ ”

“Hey…hey now, it’s all right. You don’t have to remember everything all at once. ‘Specially not before you’ve even had breakfast.” Steve grins weakly and slowly crouches down in front of Bucky, his hand folding over Bucky’s human one, which is dragging at his hair while he still holds the gun, safety off. It makes Steve feel very, very nervous – the breath rattles out of him and his shoulders sag in relief when he finally untangles the gun from Bucky’s cold fingers without incident. “Come on. I’ll make you some of those eggs.”

Bucky refuses to move, fingers going back to his hair, tugging and pulling until threads snag and yank out of his scalp. It’s as if Steve isn’t even there any more. Grief settles over Steve cold and suffocating as Bucky huddles in on himself, muttering broken fragments and ragged pleas in half a dozen different languages, fists clutching in tangles of hair.

“Okay. Okay. You can…eat in here, I guess.”

And Bucky does – devouring a huge bowl of scrambled eggs and eight pieces of toast, scooping up the egg with his hands even though Steve gives him a fork. Steve sits cross-legged in the doorway, talking quietly – as if to himself – about mornings like these just a handful of years ago and over seven decades ago at once. Memories taken carefully out and examined in every detail – they are tarnished a little by what’s gone between, but still bright and golden. Steve finds himself smiling as he talks. Bucky listens although he doesn’t say a word – Steve can tell he’s paying attention from the tilt to his head and the frown of concentration settled on his face. When he’s finished eating, Bucky curls up into the corner of the wardrobe and wraps his arms around himself, head resting against the wall and eyes sleepy on Steve. Like a child listening to a bedtime story. So Steve keeps talking.

“…ate canned food for a week. In the end I told you to just go back to your pa’s, because a help you were _not_.” Steve smiles sadly as he remembers the last few weeks of his mother’s life. Bucky had been about the only thing in Steve’s life that had kept him from sinking into despair as he’d watched his ma slip away. “I appreciated the thought, though.”

“…every single double date we went on, ended up with you having two girls on your arms. I don’t know how you did it, Bu– sorry…” Steve says as Bucky shrinks down on himself, expression darkening and mouth opening to protest.

“Don’t _call_ me that,” he snarls, wretched and dangerous, and Steve agrees amicably, apologizing again. And the stories go on, until Steve’s starting to lose his voice, and his butt is going numb.

“…so drunk you couldn’t find the spare key. So rather than head home and face your pa’s wrath, you slept on the doormat. Do you remember? Mrs Elmsley from two doors down found you there in the morning, and thought you were a vagrant. She –”

Bucky laughs, suddenly, and his face lights up behind the tangles of hair. “She hit me with a baguette.” He grins at Steve, so bright, and Steve’s heart swells until it feels like its three sizes too big. “With a… _буханка_ _хлеба_ , старая карга.” Bucky slides from English to Russian without even seeming to notice, until he sees Steve’s uncomprehending face and his grin fades. “Steve.” Bucky stares at him like he’s seeing a ghost, his features drawn stark in horror and fear. “ _Steve_.” His voice cracks and grates, and tears well up in his eyes. “What have they _done_ to me?”

“Hey, hey it’s okay…” Steve reaches out to Bucky – too fast, _too damn fast_ , he realises later, but he’s only thinking about reassurance, about stopping the panic seething up in Bucky’s eyes before it can swallow him up whole. “Bucky, it’s –” His hand closes over Bucky’s human wrist, and then suddenly there’s a metal hand clamping cold around Steve’s throat and a Bucky-shaped mass of muscle and metal slamming into Steve, knocking him flat on his back onto the floor. Bucky scrambles atop Steve with his knees bracketing Steve’s hips and his weight pinning him, and strikes down hard with his human hand as his metal hand crushes around Steve’s throat. Steve blocks the punch, grabbing Bucky’s fist and squeezing until Bucky grunts in pain and smacks his forehead down into Steve’s nose. Steve gasps at the sharp, digging hurt – only getting wisps of oxygen through the stranglehold Bucky has on him – and twists under Bucky, trying to dislodge him. Bucky’s heavier than he looks though, and Steve is hindered by his hold on Bucky’s hands, trying to limit their damage.

But then Steve’s finally surging up and over and reversing their positions; he can barely breathe though, still, and even though he’s dragging at Bucky’s metal hand for all he’s worth he can’t get Bucky’s grip off altogether. And if he can’t, then Steve’s neck is going to come out the loser. He’s straining to speak to try to get through to Bucky and calm him down, but all he can get out past Bucky’s grip on his throat are hoarse little panting sounds and frantic whoops for air. Steve realises he doesn’t have much choice when his vision starts to grey out, bright spots sparking in places; he doesn’t want to, but he lets go of Bucky’s hand around his throat. Lets go and nearly passes out beneath the clamp of Bucky’s fingers. A strangled gasp, and then Steve clocks Bucky sharply on the jaw, not holding back at all – throwing all his strength behind the blow with a silent apology.

Bucky’s metal hand goes limp as his head snaps up and to the side, and his eyes glaze over; half-shut and fluttering blindly. Steve pulls Bucky’s hand away from his throat and drags in a long, shuddering lungful of air. He doesn’t roll off Bucky straight away, but takes Bucky’s wrists in his left hand and pins them above Bucky’s head instead. It won’t hold Bucky for long, should he fight, but it will at least slow him down. Although it means Steve has to lean in closer to Bucky than he’s entirely comfortable with. Bucky moans then, lips parting and eyelashes fluttering against his cheeks - Steve has just long enough to notice the effect Bucky has on him, even half-starved and wrecked – and then Bucky’s blinking into awareness again but lying totally still, eyes wide as he looks up at Steve. He looks terrified, which is a step better than murderous but makes Steve feel sick to his stomach. He hates having Bucky look at him like this. Like Steve is going to hurt Bucky. Like _Bucky_ wants to hurt Bucky.

“Y-you all right?” Steve rasps, and there is a long, long pause before Bucky nods once, like a marionette on strings. Steve doesn’t believe him. “You’re shaking.” He slides off Bucky, letting go of his wrists. “It’s okay, B- pal. I’m sorry – I shouldn’t have grabbed at you like that. Stupid of me.” Steve sits back on his heels, watching Bucky anxiously as he scrambles up into a sitting position and pulls his hands in toward his chest, staring at them with misery on his face.

“I used to protect you…” he whispers, and his eyes are bleak. Steve wants to drag Bucky into a hug and squeeze the life half out of him, and cry, and rage, because this is too painful for words and he can’t do it. Instead he very slowly reaches out a hand to Bucky, palm up, as though he’s trying to soothe a skittish dog. There’s a lump in his throat that makes it hard to speak, as he stares

“Yeah. You protected me, and you did – did an amazing job, pal. But now you need to let me protect you. Let me help you.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re my best friend,” Steve says, voice breaking. _You’re my best friend and I love you_. Bucky just stares at Steve with wounded eyes, before looking down into his lap at his hands.

“How can I be your best friend?” he whispers, empty words that echo in Steve’s ears. His hand whirrs as he makes a fist, and then splays metal fingers open again, watching them as they fold and unfold. “I don’t even know who I am.”

* * *

 

Bucky doesn’t speak for four days. He eats, and sleeps – but thank god doesn’t relieve himself – in the hotel room wardrobe. He listens to Steve but doesn’t answer. He is silent and still, and Steve goes without sleep in order to watch him nearly constantly. Steve’s worn to a shred and wrung out past all endurance, but he thinks of a spit-slicked muzzle jammed rough between Bucky’s teeth, and forces himself to stay awake. Bucky needs him.

* * *

 


	4. Part 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so, so much for all the kudos and interest; you guys are wonderfully motivating <3  
> Content Note: suicidal ideation

* * *

 

Pt 4

On the fifth day Steve jerks awake from a doze – sprawled on the hard floor in front of the wardrobe, a blanket from the bed tucked around him like a cocoon. _Bucky_ , he thinks, smiling sad and drowsy at the thought of Bucky thinking to fetch a blanket and cover Steve up, with gentle hands and lost eyes. Caring and not remembering why. Then; _Bucky_ , he thinks with a shot of terror, and, _I fell asleep,_ and rolls to face the wardrobe – flinging the blanket off and sitting upright. His eyes land on Bucky, slouched in the corner of the wardrobe and watching Steve with hooded eyes. His hair falls over his face in a lank tangle, and there is a knife in his hand.

His eyes are blank behind the straggles of hair hanging forward around his face and his mouth is slack; Steve can tell even in his bleary, still only half-awake state that Bucky isn’t in the room anymore. He’s gone behind the eyes – lost in a memory; Steve is guessing, of Hydra’s making. Bucky’s knuckles whiten as his hand tightens around the knife handle, and his lips flatten, and Steve can see panic flaring deep in his eyes. Something in another language that Steve doesn’t recognise murmurs and whispers from Bucky’s lips, something that sounds like desperation and pleading, fear. Steve’s gentle and coaxing when he speaks, but it doesn’t get through to Bucky, who stares past Steve’s shoulder with an animal kind of misery in his eyes. Trying to get the knife away from Bucky results in a light cut to Bucky’s cheek that streaks thin and red from under his eye to his ear, and a deep slash to Steve’s hand that bleeds thick and red and leaves Bucky stricken with guilt.

“Just kill me,” Bucky says afterwards, voice thick and halting but sanity in his eyes, and Steve fumbles the bandage he’s found to wrap his hand in, dropping it to the floor. It bounces and unravels, landing in front of Bucky. The wound in Steve’s hand is deep – the blade skittering over small bones and nicking at tendons – but by tomorrow it should be mostly healed, courtesy of the serum. He forgets it now, and the bandage, and stares at Bucky wide-eyed and horrified.

“No,” he says and it is hoarse and desperate, and full of revulsion at the idea. “Bucky, no. _Never._ ” Bucky goes stiff at Steve’s slip in using his name, but he doesn’t lash out. Steve supposes tiredly that there has been enough of that already.

“Don’t call me that,” Bucky says instead, like a broken record, and Steve nods dully. “I’m sorry,” Bucky says then, and shuffles forward a little. “I don’t want to hurt you, Steve. But I…I’m not me. I’m not…anything.” With a little twist of his lips, Bucky looks down and away, eyes shuttering.

“That’s not true!” Steve protests, and Bucky doesn’t answer, lips sealing together. Instead he reaches cautiously out and takes Steve’s injured hand into his two – metal cold and smooth, and flesh hand feverish hot and clammy. There’s a careful reverence in the way he bandages Steve’s hand, and an odd clumsiness too, teeth denting into his lower lip and eyebrows drawing together in concentration. “You’re…everything, Bu– pal. You’re everything to me.”

“You don’t even know if there’s anything left of who I was,” Bucky says, his human fingers carefully winding the bandage snugly around Steve’s hand, while Bucky cradles it in his metal one. The bandage is soft and rough at once, and so are Bucky’s fingers. There’s a mesmerising tenderness to the way he touches Steve’s hand, which should be accompanied by warmth, and intimate smiles, and perhaps gentle open-mouthed kisses. But the Bucky in front of Steve knows nothing of these things. His voice is a dead thing, and his eyes are muddled pain. “You don’t know _anything_.”

“I –”

“I wish you’d killed me, on the helicarrier. I wish you’d snapped my goddamn neck and then none – of _this_ would have – I don’t – I _can't_ …” Bucky’s hands stutter into stillness, and his fingers dig at Steve’s hand as he squeezes without seeming to notice, the wound beneath the bandaging stinging sharp and raw. Bucky snaps his eyes to meet Steve’s and they are wet and bleak. “You should have _killed_ me.” And Steve has nothing to say to that, only tears that prick hot behind his eyes, and a hollow ache in his chest that grows with each passing day.

* * *

The next day Steve puts Bucky under with a tranquiliser. He gets Bucky’s dull, passive permission to inject the small vial's contents, but that really doesn’t make Steve feel better, considering what Bucky had let Hydra do to him. Torture and conditioning could conceivably have Bucky nodding yes to  _anything_ that someone wanted to do to him no matter how awful, and passively suffering through it like an automaton. Sometimes he seems no more than a living doll. Steve feels like he’s betraying Bucky as he tucks his now-unconscious body under the blankets that line the wardrobe, but he doesn’t have much choice. They need food, and Steve can't trust Bucky to be alone and fully conscious for the several hours it might take to go shopping.

When Steve gets back he sits with Bucky until he wakes, carding his fingers gently through Bucky’s hair, teasing out the tangles and watching Bucky breathe slow through parted lips.

* * *

The only way for Steve to feel comfortable getting any sleep is if Bucky is also sleeping, or otherwise incapacitated. He starts handcuffing them together so Bucky at least can't slip away to find a weapon. He sleeps lightly, waiting for the crush of a metal hand around his throat, but it never comes. Once Steve wakes from a doze to Bucky lying nose to nose with him, cross-eyed and concentrating very hard, his hand all curled awkward up with Steve’s making a spidery interlacing of cool metal fingers and warm human ones. “We slept together; when the air was smoky and heavy with damp, and the cold bled so deep in my bones,” Bucky whispers dazedly as Steve stifles the instinct to jerk back a little, blinking into Bucky’s sea-blue eyes instead. “You were smaller and you wouldn’t stop coughing, even with all the blankets on the bed, and I was scared because you were…” Bucky pauses and those bright eyes cast down, darkening as he frowns and struggles to remember. “You were…important to me.”

_Were important_. Steve’s insides twist and ache with grief that is selfish and unselfish both.

“After my ma died, you spent more nights at my house than your own in the middle of the winters,” Steve whispers back, forcing a smile to his lips, and resisting the urge to trace the thumb of his free hand down the lines of Bucky’s face. He can feel Bucky’s breath hot on his face – the scent of the tinned tomato soup they had for dinner. “You always worried that the house was too cold and draughty. You’d crawl into bed with me to keep me warm.” Steve’s smile grows into something unforced; sad but _real_ , and the memories are sharp and crisp-clear in his mind. The scent of wood smoke and the feel of Bucky jammed up against him in the bed that used to be Steve’s ma’s, Bucky all elbows and knees and sleepy banter that was teasing and a little worried at once. Talking about girls and work and the war, while all Steve could think about was how good Bucky smelt, and how _warm_ he was, and how much Steve wanted to just _touch_ him in ways that he could never do. “I don’t know if it ever helped stop me from getting sick, but I appreciated the company. I got real lonely after my ma passed, and having you there made things a little more cheerful.”

“Mmph. Tha’s nice...” Bucky murmurs drowsily, eyes slipping shut, and Steve puzzles over the non-sequitur for a split second before he realises with a shock that he’s started idly caressing Bucky’s face, despite his determination not to. And _caressing_ is the only word for it. Thumb dragging from Bucky’s forehead, down his temple and along the curve of his cheek and jaw, down to the jut of chin, thumb resting just below his lower lip, before starting the upward journey again. Steve freezes with his thumb at Bucky’s temple, and Bucky blinks his eyes open after a few seconds pass.

“Steve?” he asks confusedly, handcuffed hand squeezing Steve’s, and he sounds so much more like himself that Steve’s heart skips a beat. And it’s _wrong_ for Steve to be taking advantage of Bucky like this by pretending – but Bucky is so soothed by the gentle, outwardly innocent little motion, that Steve can’t bring himself to stop, no matter how inappropriate his own motivations behind doing it might be. Bucky hasn’t seemed this peaceful in days. In years, decades, since the fall from the train. Steve doesn't know.

“Sorry,” Steve apologises quietly, and takes a deep, steadying breath before beginning again. Thumb joined by the touch of two fingers; sweeping from the forehead down, detouring slightly to scrape his fingernails lightly over Bucky’s scalp along the edges of his hairline, prompting a contented hum almost like a purr as Bucky’s eyes close again, and an odd little smile drags at the edges of his lips. Bucky falls asleep like that; body curling towards Steve, arching into his touch, and he is all elbows and knees.

And Steve drapes an arm over the sleeping man, pretending that they are young again in a damp house in a Brooklyn winter, Steve still grieving his ma but taking comfort in Bucky. He sighs soft, a sound that Bucky echoes, and they unconsciously shift closer together as Steve slips into sleep by slow degrees.

He dreams of falling.

* * *

Days pass. Steve struggles with the art of story-telling in the silent hotel room. Bucky makes an unreliable audience. Sometimes when he's docile, he lays his head in Steve's lap, and allows –  _makes_ – Steve comb the tangles out of his dark hair with his fingers. It leaves them both calmer. Steve still feels weird about it though.

* * *

Five hours after reminiscing with Steve about a particularly bad double date they’d had shortly after Bucky had enlisted, Bucky wakes screaming – violent in his panic, trapped inside the nightmare that Hydra inflicted upon him. And Steve can do nothing but try to limit the damage that Bucky causes to himself and Steve. It’s as if the peaceful moments never happen. They’re erased by fear – obliterated by the evil that Zola stuffed and stitched beneath Bucky’s skin, stricken out through the way he burnt at Bucky’s brain, and trained him with pain until he lost all sense of himself. And every time Bucky dreams of it all, it seems like any progress they make is forgotten and crushed beneath the weight of the horrors. For every step forward they take, they take another straight back. It’s been weeks without any real progress, and Steve is running out of sanity; every minute is chipping away at him, wearing him down inexorably. But Bucky is worth it; worth every hurt and every worry, because Bucky swore to him –  _‘til the end of the line_ , and Steve swore it right back. Because Buck is his best damn friend, and he loves him.

“ _Whywhywhy won’t it stop? Whywon’titstop? Please pleasepleasemakeit STOP,_ ” Bucky screams muffled as he curls into a ball in the back corner of the wardrobe, hands tearing at his hair, and Steve stares at him hollow and helpless. He stares at the lost and hopeless agony that is written in every line of Bucky, and wonders when love becomes selfish greed. He wonders whether he is fighting a losing battle.

* * *

Steve dials the number that Barton had given him with no questions asked and only a little ribbing – surely a sign of how strung out Steve must have sounded. He takes a slow, deep breath and tries to compose himself and order his sleep-deprived brain as the phone connects and begins to ring. It  _burrs_ six times, and then he hears a slightly ragged breath on the other side of the line. He doesn’t wait for her to speak, the words rushing out. “Natasha? It’s me. Steve.”

“I _know_ , Steve.” She’s out of breath, and there’s a hint of warm frustration at his stupidity in the way she says his name – he always forgets about caller id. “Who gave you this number? Was it – never mind, hang on.” The _blat_ of a gunshot sounds on Natasha’s end, and then she’s back on the line, still a little out of breath, her tone light. “So, what’s happening, Rogers?”

“Are you…all right? I can call back, if you like.”

“It’s fine. I’m just wrapping this up. With my cover blown so completely, people keep chasing me.” She sounds almost pleased about that, and Steve thinks to himself, _and you keep letting them catch you._ “How are things going with Barnes?” she says then, casual and easy. Steve isn’t surprised Natasha knows he managed to catch up to Bucky; Natasha has her ways. She says that she doesn’t know everything – just pretends to  - but it’s a close thing, Steve thinks. He doesn’t care how she found out, to be frank, but asks her the expected question anyway.

“How did you know?”

“Avengers gossip.” Her voice is very wry and amused. “After your chat with Banner, he spoke to Tony about getting in specialised medical equipment to examine Barnes with, when you eventually bring him back to the Tower. MRIs and the like,” Natasha says lightly, as if it should have been _obvious_ , as if Steve should have _known_ that he has friends who will not only house him and his brainwashed assassin best friend, but spend untold sums of money on equipment to help said brainwashed assassin. Steve’s glad Natasha keeps talking because he’s choking up and wouldn’t trust himself to speak. “And then Tony went on and on and _on_ about the excitement of having a vintage prosthetic like Barnes’ to study to anyone with, ah, _clearance_ in earshot. I couldn’t help hearing.”

“Who knows?” Anxiety rises up thick and fast in Steve, because Bucky is a wanted man. A _target._ And if Tony has been playing fast and loose with his life…

“Banner, Tony, Clint, Pepper, Thor, Jane Foster – oh, and Foster’s assistant, Darcy Lewis. That’s all, unless you include Jarvis. It would be better if none if them knew, of course, but at least none of them owe any loyalty to Hydra or S.H.I.E.L.D. It should be fine, Steve.”

“Good, good.” He’s beyond tired and barely thinking straight. Then something occurs to him, with a pang and a spasm of grief and awkwardness. “Tony – Tony doesn’t know about his parents?”

“No. Not yet. I think he suspects – he’s done his own digging into the Winter Soldier’s history although he hasn't read the file of course – but he doesn’t seem particularly…angry about the possibility. He knows better than to blame Barnes, Steve.”

There’s a pause as Steve tries to organise his fractured thoughts.

“Natasha?”

“Hm?”

Steve rubs his eyes and shoots Bucky a look; asleep for now, curled up peaceful as a lamb in the nest he’s made for himself in the wardrobe. When Bucky has his nightmares – or those awful fadeouts where he goes blank behind the eyes – often there’s a physical struggle when he snaps out of the daze, or the dreaming. It's violent and noisy, and people in the rooms beside them have been complaining. The hotel manager is suspicious and sour, and unsurprisingly doesn't believe Steve is alone in the room. She has told Steve he'll have to go. With use of his most charming smile, Steve has managed to wrangle an extra two nights in order for him to find somewhere else, but then they will have to be gone.

So they're moving on – but not going too far, yet. Steve doesn’t think Bucky’s quite ready for the Avengers Tower; he barely seems to trust Steve – skittish and frightened half the time – so Steve doubts he’ll be able to handle the occupants of the Tower. Especially Tony; Steve grimaces at the thought of Bucky and Tony meeting. Not only is Tony just _too much_ in general, he’s also too much like Howard, which would be a positive thing in Bucky’s case if it would revive old memories, except… _well_. Given what Steve knows of the Winter Soldier’s activity, Steve’s afraid the sight of Tony will trigger the _wrong_ set of memories. And Bucky’s shaken his head vehemently at any mention of going on a plane anyway, and Steve hasn’t wanted to risk pushing the topic. They will have to stay in Russia, for now.

So, their options are unfortunately rather limited. He could try another hotel, but then the same issues would arise. And Steve hates having to ask Natasha for a favour, but he’s hoping she may be able to help out. “Natasha, do you happen to have a – a safehouse or anything, in Russia? Preferably something that’s not in a densely populated area? I – I hate to ask, but…” he begins tentatively. He’s doing this for _Bucky_ he reminds himself – but that doesn’t mean he has to like it. Because he doesn’t. He doesn’t want Natasha feeling…obliged. It doesn't seem fair to her, as private and distant as she always prefers to be. But he doesn't really have a choice.

“It’s fine, Steve. It’s not a problem, honestly.” Steve can _hear_ the tight little smile smoothing the edges off Natasha’s cool voice. “I’m sure I can find the two of you _something_ suitable.”

* * *

 


	5. Part 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The response to this fic is amazing, you guys. You all make me so happy ^_^ Thanks so much for all your kudos and kind words.  
> Content note for self-harm.

* * *

Pt 5

  


Steve doesn’t think what Natasha has arranged for him and Bucky is a safehouse of hers – or a hunting cabin, or a tourist getaway. She sends him an email with a map to the location and photos of the place itself attached. The subject line - the only personal message - says: _You owe me, Rogers._ The cabin looks small, but modern and comfortable inside, just like a tourist cabin would be. But it’s situated several hours from the nearest town, in a forested area of the country that is as far from a tourist hotspot as possible. It’s also not in a location Steve thinks Natasha would choose for a safehouse – too isolated; she is better at blending into crowds, not hiding down long and lonely back roads. Steve doesn’t know _what_ the cabin’s intended purpose is to be honest; all he knows is that it is, according to Natasha, _safe_. And it is indeed, _something suitable._

It takes Steve several hours to convince Bucky to leave the safety of their hotel wardrobe, even with a sedative to smooth Bucky’s jagged-sharp nerves and make him more pliable. He is wobbly after the sedative, and stares at Steve with eyes that seem caught between a dog-like obedience, and an equally animal fear. When the sedative begins to wear off halfway through the trip to the cabin, Bucky’s edgier, but doesn’t react badly as Steve was afraid he would. Instead he hunches down in his seat and hugs a blanket to him like a child, hair in tangles around his face, scruff that is now long enough to be called a beard making him look wild and dangerous. His eyes gleam like coins as he stares out at the landscape skimming past, and Steve talks in a constant quiet stream of simple, little things. Meditative exercises that he found on the internet, calming imagery, happy memories, funny stories about working Natasha, or travelling Europe with Sam, or Steve’s attempts to adjust to the modern world.

Bucky looks out the window at the scenery, but Steve thinks he listens, and sometimes a small smile flickers at his mouth. Mostly when Steve is telling the stories that make him look like an idiot. _Ya dumb punk,_ Bucky would’ve said in another lifetime, and ruffled his hair rough and affectionate. Instead he shines faint with the edges of a grin, and that is enough.

The cabin is set well off a dirt road that cuts through a large forested area, and Steve takes their rented truck along a winding rutted track to reach it. It’s slushy and uneven as hell, and they spend ten minutes skidding and jolting along the track, bouncing up and down in the truck cab until Steve thinks he’s going to end up black and blue all over. And when he looks across at the seat beside him, he sees Bucky is grinning. “Faster,” Bucky says in a voice that wobbles from the bumps, and there is a mad, pure kind of joy on his face. “Go _faster_.”

So Steve goes faster, flooring the pedal and flying through the trees like they are invincible instead of just hard to kill. Skim-jolting over bumps and down slopes, rattling in their seats until it feels like their very bones are going to come apart in pieces, unhooking and unhinging. But Bucky just hangs on tight and bares his teeth in a feral kind of grin, and laughs. And Steve goes faster.

When they arrive at the cabin, Bucky draws the tranq gun that he has adopted as _his_ and refuses to be parted from. He is cautious and silent as he scouts around the cabin exterior – suspicious, and oddly protective of Steve in a way that reminds Steve of Brooklyn and long ago. Steve is empty-handed; he threw away the other gun on the long trip out to the cabin – breaking it down and scattering the pieces across Russian roadsides. He hates to lose one of their weapons in case they get into a tough bind, but he can’t risk having a gun around Bucky. Anything is lethal in Bucky’s hands, sure, but a gun makes it too easy. The key to the cabin is where Natasha said it would be; hanging from a nail just under the front porch. Steve lets them in, the mustiness of long disuse tickling in his nose, stale and still.

The cabin is four rooms; one is both neat, modern kitchen and simply decorated lounge, one is the bedroom, one the bathroom, and the last a tiny laundry space by the back door. Bucky says it smells like blood, and points out faded dark stains on the carpet that look like blood spatter. He doesn’t seem particularly bothered by that fact, though it gives Steve the heebie-jeebies. But he trusts Natasha when she says this place is safe.

Before they left Moscow Steve bought a full stock of groceries that are stacked in cooler bags in the back of the truck; Bucky helps Steve carry in the bags, and puts the groceries neatly away in the kitchen while Steve brings in more things. Aside from groceries, Steve bought new clothes and toiletries, and those bags Steve dumps in the bedroom by the door, before pausing with his arms crossed over his chest, leaning into the door frame and staring at the one bed with a small frown. There is no wardrobe, and Steve wonders if Bucky might finally end up sleeping in the bed without a hiding place to retreat to. If he does then they will share a bed again like they used to in Brooklyn; the thought makes an uneasy heat pool in Steve’s belly.

There is a crash from the kitchen, and Steve stiffens and glances over his shoulder at Bucky with unthinking, automatic fear. But Bucky’s just fishing a fallen and dented can of beans out of the otherwise empty sink, shooting Steve an apologetic kind of look as he juggles an armful of cans and the dented beans. Steve snorts a laugh – it’s so _Bucky_ to try to grab everything at once – and moves to help without thinking. For a split second, it’s almost like everything is normal. They have the beans – with several more cans added – on toast for dinner, eating at the table, the tranq gun laying there within Bucky’s reach, like a security blanket. There is no TV, but Steve’s phone gets the internet even out here, and when Bucky’s streak of calmness continues, Steve spends the evening showing him funny videos on YouTube.

It’s fierce victory and an aching joy when after hours of videos, Bucky finally dissolves into shocked laughter at the screaming goats Sam had showed Steve months ago. And then the laughter turns into hysterical tears that Bucky can’t explain the cause of and Steve spends the next three hours with Bucky clinging to him; crying an unending flood of hot tears into Steve’s shirt, his shoulders shaking as he sobs, the two of them tangled together like halves. Steve cries a little too.

* * *

Bucky remembers more, but he’s not getting any better. If anything, it feels like he’s getting worse. Vacillating between two increasing extremes. One minute Bucky is someone who prefers to be called ‘James’, who is sometimes so much like Bucky used to be that it is like going back in time to what could have been after the war, if things had turned out differently. There is a fragility and a knife-edge nerviness to him that never used to be there, but the essence of  _Bucky_ comes flashing through now and then in fragments. And then the next minute, Bucky is the broken shell that Zola made him into – hollowing him out, scooping out his memories like pumpkin seeds, carving Bucky into the shapes he wanted, and setting a cold, dead light to shine where  _he_ used to be. Steve can’t keep up, and he knows he’s not enough to help make Bucky better, but Bucky refuses to talk about going back home, to New York and Stark Tower, clamming up whenever Steve tentatively tries to mention it.  


* * *

Weeks pass.  


* * *

On a sunny afternoon they go exploring through the forest. Bucky climbs a tree like a monkey, and seems amused by Steve’s uneasy worry for him. He refuses to come down - out of sheer annoying stubbornness rather than any worrisome reasons. Steve clambers up after him in the end, and they end up both clinging to the tippy-top of the tree, swaying dangerously back and forth in the wind and staring out at the wilderness around them. Bucky smiles at Steve and his eyes crinkle up, his hair whips back in the wind, and his hand entangles itself with Steve’s. It's beautiful.  


On a sunny afternoon while Steve is making food after they get back from their tree-climbing exploration, Bucky opens his human wrist with a knife he pilfered from the kitchen, and Steve finds him all crimson and ashen white slumped down in the shower stall. It’s not enough for him to bleed out, but it’s enough to damn near stop Steve’s heart when he goes to check why Bucky’s been so long in the shower, and finds a sodden heap of broken person with wounded bewilderment in his eyes, and a knife held absently in his metal hand.

“ _Why?_ ” Steve asks the man he calls James and thinks of as _Bucky_ as he bandages him up with shaking hands, so thankful that Bucky didn’t decide to cut his own throat or something else that wouldn’t have been so easy to come back from. So frightened. So frustrated, because he tries and tries and it’s one step forward and another straight back. “Goddamnit, James, _why?_ ”

Bucky just shrugs and his eyes are flat and dead, and his body is a crumpled husk, and Steve wants to shake him until he is _him_ again and not this familiar stranger, naked and wet and _nothing_. Bucky smiles and it is dead and flat just like his eyes. “Why not?” he says, and Steve bites his tongue so hard it bleeds the taste of pennies in his mouth, and he is silent as he wraps Bucky’s wrist in neat white bandages that hide the red and ragged slash through his flesh. There is nothing Steve can say that Bucky will listen to.

_Because I love you_ , he thinks hard and angry as his teeth sink into his tongue – but when he has said it in the past Bucky just _looks_ at him with a blank expression that hurts more than he can bear. So instead he holds the words inside him, his chest aching at the strain of it.

* * *

It has been three months since Steve last spoke to Sam. He sends short, factual emails sometimes, to let Sam know that he’s still all right, and to keep up with what  _he’s_ doing – living in New York and getting along well with Tony, it seems, the two men bonding over their mutual love of mechanized flight. The phone rings a seventh time, and he’s about to hang up, when it clicks through. “–shuddup, Tony, I gotta take – shut – goddamn, stop it, it's Steve – hello? Hey, Steve, you there?”  


“…Sam?” Embarrassingly Steve’s voice breaks, and he clears his throat, cheeks flushing hot.

“You need me, I’m there, brother,” comes through the phone immediately in response, worried but joking, and Steve chokes a weak laugh, on the edge of the couch; on the edge in general.

“I need you,” he says obediently, voice thick with emotion but smiling as he speaks, because god is it ever good to hear Sam’s voice again.

“Whoa, man – coming on a little strong, there,” Sam jokes, a little, silly thing that ends up stupidly making Steve think uncomfortable things about Bucky, things that he isn’t supposed to be thinking. He thinks of all the things that it doesn’t feel fair to Bucky to be thinking about in _that way_ , but Steve just can’t help it, because he’s loved Bucky since they were boys, in every way you can love a person, and he loves him still now. But he shouldn’t, because Bucky shouldn’t have such things put upon him. But. _But_.

Steve thinks of how the lines of Bucky look, all hard, scarred muscles in the shower through the steam, his hair falling in wet, dark sheets around his face, metal arm gleaming alien, and oddly beautiful despite its horrendous origin. Like the few precious times Bucky has laughed, and his mouth has curved into that wide, beautiful grin that takes Steve back – right back to before the war, and Steve feels love lurch like pain inside him every time. Like all the times that Steve wakes to Bucky watching him with an intently peaceful kind of expression on his face, the blankness retreated for a while and replaced with something that Steve thinks looks like tenderness. Like the feel of his face beneath Steve’s fingers, and the smell of him when they sprawl together in the bed, and the way Bucky moves around the cabin with the threatening grace of a predator, the fearlessness when they go scrambling through the forest – down cliffs and up trees.

Steve clears his throat awkwardly, deliberately avoiding craning his neck to look through the doorframe at Bucky’s sleeping form, all curled up on the bed in the next room. “I need advice, Sam. I need you to tell me what to do. He needs my help, but I don’t know _how_ to… Nothing seems to make any difference, in the long run. He's remembering, but he's not getting any _better_.”

“Maybe it’s time to bring him home, Steve.” A silence stretching out, Sam letting the words sink in. “You know, you don’t have to do this alone, man. We’re all here. Just one big happy family, according to Stark – it’s kinda weird how _insistent_ he was that I come crash here, if you ask me, but hell – he’s fixing up my wings, so do you hear me complaining? He's given me my own suite, you know that? Everything set up just exactly how I like it. I shudder to think how much it cost, but I guess he can take it.”

“He designed a suite for you?” Steve asks, laughing to himself through his confusion because it's ridiculous, and yet it _does_ sound like something the mad engineer would do.

“I know, right? Seriously. A suite that’s bigger than my whole damn _house_ in DC. I think that means he likes me.” A pause. “A disturbing amount.” Another pause. “Hey. Come back, Steve. You gotta come back. You can't do this alone forever.”

Steve gets up then, like a magnet is drawing him, moving on soundless feet to the bedroom doorway and staring in at the single occupant, sighing. He keeps his voice soft when he answers Sam, watching Bucky sleep, breath coming in soft snuffles. He's curled in the centre of the bed, his face half veiled by his hair and peaceful in sleep. “He doesn’t want to. I don’t – I don’t want to take another choice away from him. He’s…he deserves to be able to make his own choices.”

“And what about _you?_ ”

“I choose to be with _him_. Wherever he is. Whatever happens. I’m not losing him again.” Steve doesn’t mention the fact that he’s already lost Bucky again; lost him to the Winter Soldier and the bewildered morass that is the remains of Bucky’s mind. Whether Steve'll get Bucky back again is something he's still trying to figure out. He refuses to give up hope, but it's getting harder and harder to cling to. Steve rubs a hand over his face and sighs into the phone. “I'm not forcing Bucky into going through with anything he doesn't want. I _can't_.”

“I understand that he's your best friend, Steve. I get that you would do anything for him, I do. And that's real admirable, but you have to look at the big picture - what happens when you run out of energy? Huh? What happens when you get worn down to nothing trying to shoulder this burden all alone, and you can't handle it anymore? How is that good for either of you?” Sam is hard and insistent, but full of concern. It comes from a good place, but it's not what Steve wants to hear. He pushes off from the bedroom doorframe - turns and walks away, as if he's trying to escape Sam's words. It's stupid because he keeps the phone to his ear as he crosses the small lounge and carefully opens the door. The night air is crisp and cool, and the half-moon is wreathed in dark whirls of cloud.

“I know, Sam. I know. But I can't –”

“This is why you called me, Rogers. I'm not stupid, and neither are you. You can't be his everything. You _shouldn't_ be. You can't handle it, and let's be honest, as messed up as Barnes is; he needs more than just your shoulder to cry on. He needs professional help.”

“Sam…”

“And that's why after months of all but ignoring me, you're finally calling me up. Because you need me to tell it to you straight. You've done all that you can on your own, and now - _now_ , like it or not, buddy, you need to come home.”

“I haven't been ignoring you!” Steve protests, feeling uneasy with guilt, because while he's had good reason, he _has_ been all but ignoring Sam. Which isn't really fair on Sam, considering all he's done for Steve, but there hasn't really been any room for thoughts of anyone but Bucky in Steve's mind right now. “And – and I…I didn't call because I want you to give me…some kind of _permission_ to take Bucky back whether he likes it or not, because I won't do that to him. _Ever_. I called because I need advice.” He's angry by the time he's finished speaking, a clipped kind of tone twisting his voice - angry at himself and Sam, because Sam is at least half right. And he doesn't want Sam to be right. Steve wants to be enough; he wants to not fail Bucky, he wants to know how to _fix things_.

Sam is silent for a long moment, only the sound of his breathing proof that he is still there. Then: “That is my advice, Rogers. Come. Home. Come home and get Barnes – and you too – some proper damn therapy. A support system. People who are willing and capable of backing you up. Shit, man, you've got half a dozen people who want to help. Let us!”

“I can't.” The words fall numb from Steve's lips as he shifts against the cabin doorframe, his eyes unfocused on the moonlit forest stretching out into the night. He feels cold and useless, and as though no matter what he does, he'll be failing someone. Betray Bucky's trust, or disappoint Sam - the choice is simple but no less unpleasant because of that. “I can't. Bucky...” It's all he has to say. Sam sighs, a harsh, short sound.

“Well, I tried. If you – or Barnes – change your minds, you know where to find us all. In the meantime, well, I'll talk to some people and see what…techniques I can find that you could use to help Barnes.”

“Thanks, Sam.” Steve is quiet, voice small and subdued in the Russian night, swallowed up by the shadows and moon-streaks. He is lucky, he thinks, to have such good friends. Sam makes a noncommittal sound, and Steve pictures him kicking back in his luxury suite in Stark Tower, nursing a bottle of beer and shrugging off Steve's gratitude in that careless, unselfish way he has.

“It's nothing, man. And hey, take care of yourself, okay? Alright? You aren't gonna be any good to him if you're a damn wreck.” They talk a little longer before Steve starts yawning, and Sam all but orders him to go catch some sleep, and Steve does as he’s told for once, locking the cabin up tight before he pads through to the bedroom, where Bucky lies; still and silent, curled beneath the covers.

* * *

  



	6. Part 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much, wonderful readers, for all your kudos and comments <3  
> I've reached the end of my pre-written chapters now, so updates may be a little infrequent from now on. Only a few more chapters in this work to go now anyway, although there will be more works in this series.

* * *

 

Pt 6

Bucky stirs at Steve's light step into the room, but doesn't take fright, just uncurls from his ball under the blankets and blinks owlishly at Steve. His hair is flattened on one side, and sticking up at the back, and his beard has grown long enough to make him look like a stranger. There is fear all over Bucky’s face, his every feature is drenched in it – cold and helpless and so devastating that it hurts to look at him. Steve smiles at him as he sets the phone down and finds the handcuffs out of automatic habit; they’re tucked away in the top drawer of his bedside table and he fishes them out without having to look.

“How much did you hear?” Steve asks Bucky casually, because he is getting to know this strange amalgamation between Bucky and the cold shell that Zola tried to make him into. He knows now that Bucky was awake and listening beneath the soft comfort of the blankets, lines of muscle held painfully tense and eyes wide and frightened, waiting for Steve’s betrayal. “It's okay. You can tell me. I wasn't trying to…hide the conversation from you.”

Bucky shrugs as if it doesn't matter, but his fingers pick nervously at the blanket and his fragile tone belies the shrug. “You really won't make me go back?”

“Not if you don't want to, James.” The name feels strange on Steve’s tongue still, but okay. He can try to live with it, if it’s what Bucky prefers, if it stops that horrible flinching recoil every time he has slipped up and begun saying _Bucky_ instead. But he can’t seem to stop himself from _thinking_ of the other man as Bucky. “Like I said to Sam, you’ve had enough choices taken away from you. I’m here to help give them back, not take more away.” Bucky’s eyes fall pointedly on the handcuffs that Steve has snapped around his own wrist, and is about to slide over Bucky’s metal one. Steve bites his lip, and keys in the code on the tiny glowing display he brings up with a press of his thumb – the handcuffs are Tony’s tech – and the cuff springs free from his wrist. “I’ve been doing that to protect you, James. Not to imprison you…” Steve licks his lips nervously, struggling to find a way to explain it that doesn’t sound like he was doing exactly that. “Not. I. Well. I just didn’t want to lose you again, after I’d only just…found you. And at first there were civilians around, and you weren’t stable…and I was worried you might, well, hurt yourself. But we don’t have to anymore, if you don’t want to.”

Bucky smiles faintly, bitter-edged and tired, and the shadows under his eyes make him look ashen and hollow. “It’s fine, Steve. I –” He pauses, uncertain for a second, frowning as his eyes flick between the handcuffs and Steve’s face, avoiding Steve’s eyes. His human hand darts out then, snatching up the handcuffs, fingers flexing as he snaps the cuff shut around his metal wrist. “I like it.” It’s a soft admission that Steve barely hears, Bucky’s eyes turned down to the bed and his voice little more than a mumble. An ache begins in Steve’s chest as he wonders why Bucky would like it. Security? Because it’s what he’s used to? Because he wants to feel safe and close to Steve, or because he’s accustomed to being treated like a prisoner? Steve doesn’t suppose it matters.

“Okay,” he says quiet and neutral after a beat passes, and holds out his left wrist – better to have his off-hand restrained, even if he is very nearly ambidextrous – and Bucky carefully closes the cuff around it with a hissing click. The chain between the two cuffs is about half a foot long; enough that they can sleep without having to be bunched uncomfortably together. They do it anyway though – Bucky twisting toward Steve and making it so his human hand touches Steve’s in some way, so that their knees or hips or shoulders bump and press together, so that their breath touches hot on the other’s skin. And sometimes Steve still strokes his fingers over Bucky’s face and through his hair – cautious, feather-light touches that make Bucky hum contentedly to himself, a low rumble in his chest like a cat’s purr. Steve doesn’t do it often though; it sparks off quicksilver heat that pools in Steve’s abdomen and makes his dick twitch with the arousal, and it feels very wrong to use Bucky’s simple pleasure to provoke that sensation in himself.

And everyone says he’s perfect Captain America, who can do no wrong. Who always makes the ethical choices. Steve knows better than that. If he was so perfect he wouldn’t wake in the night with his breath tight and his dick rigid, dreams of Bucky naked, heavy-lidded and flushed hot beneath Steve as he slides home into Bucky, again and again. _So damned good_ , Steve pants in his dreams, his fingers clenching with near-bruising force into Bucky’s hip, holding him steady as he drives into him. That long dark hair sweat-damp and tangled, the metal hand clutching into the pillow as Bucky’s hips arch up, face-to-face because Steve wants to watch as Bucky cums – his human hand wrapped around his own dick, jerking himself unsteady and desperate as Steve rocks into him. Moans wavering from Bucky’s dropped-open mouth, his eyes on Steve’s and glazed with pleasure not confusion, pupils blown and sweat-damp chest heaving as he gasps for breath.

 _Christ._ Steve grits his teeth and flicks off the bedside lamp, plunging them into a darkness that is eased only by the weak light seeping in beneath the door from the lounge. He settles his head to the pillow, the two of them moving awkwardly together until he is positioned on his back, Bucky curled on his side facing Steve, his arm draped over Steve’s waist thanks to the limits of the handcuffs. It’s physically close but Steve tries to keep a little distance between them, emotionally if nothing else. Otherwise he’s afraid of what he might be tempted to do. It would be so _easy_ to just roll over and kiss Bucky, and Bucky...well, whether he once felt about Steve that way or not is irrelevant. He certainly isn’t capable of consenting now, not with his mind pulled apart to pieces, and half of those pieces still missing. So Steve clamps down on his _urges_ and lies there stiff, trying to think of anything but the way Bucky’s arm loops warm and possessive over him like a torment.

“Steve?”

“Yeah…James?”

“If – if you need to go back…” Bucky’s voice is tight and frightened, and Steve wishes he could make out Bucky’s expression in the dark, but all he can see is the shadowy shape of nose and chin, and a fall of hair. “Then…then I – I…” He stumbles and his voice scrapes, low and rusty and run through with a kind of resigned fear and hopelessness. “You can leave me here. I – I won’t hurt any civilians. I swear.”

“What about the girl?” Steve asks gently, thinking of the child in Moscow, wanting to know what Bucky will say to that even though he’s not entertaining the thought of going anywhere without Bucky. Steve feels guilt sharp in his belly as Bucky shifts uncomfortably in the dark, his arm stiffening over Steve’s waist.

“That was. Before.” Steve can hear the weight in Bucky’s halting voice and in the way Bucky’s arm tightens around him. “Before you found me. You – you _are_ helping me, Steve. I think, anyway. I – I remember more, now. I remember…”

“Too much,” Steve offers grimly, because that’s the truth, and Bucky nods – just visible in the near-dark, his voice equally flat and dull.

“…Yeah. Sometimes.”

Steve places his hand over Bucky’s, where it drapes over his abdomen, fingers shaping to the curve of his side, and the back of Bucky’s hand is warm and smooth beneath Steve’s palm. “I’m not going anywhere without you, B– James. I’m with you ‘til the end of the line. Do – do you remember that?”

Bucky’s voice is nothing more than a whisper as he presses infinitesimally closer to Steve, and his fingers curl and shift to trap Steve’s between them, locking them together.

“Yeah. I remember that, Stevie.”

* * *

One afternoon, Bucky comes to Steve, rubbing at his beard with a frown of displeasure. “It itches,” he says. “And it doesn’t look right in the mirror.”

“You don’t look much like you,” Steve agrees absently, without thinking, and then bites his tongue. Because Bucky _isn’t_ who he was, and he will never be that person again. And that’s all right, Steve’s getting used to that idea, but it’s also raw and hard and a difficult topic to approach without Bucky feeling hurt and rejected, as if Steve loves him any less because he’s not the Bucky he knew. Which isn’t goddamned true in the slightest. But instead of lashing out, Bucky just shoves his hands in his pockets and rocks back on his heels, eying Steve neutrally.

“I don’t know…how,” he says at last, scratching at his bristly jaw. “Will – will you help?”

“Yeah,” Steve breathes without hesitation, his chest as tight as if he has asthma again at the easy trust in Bucky’s question, and hurries to unlock the shaving kit. He shaves the beard from Bucky’s face in the small white bathroom, and it feels like each scrape of the razor reveals another strip of the best friend that Steve used to know. It’s just an illusion, Steve knows, but it’s comforting all the same to look at Bucky and see _him_ and not a bearded stranger. The strong jaw and cleft chin that are as familiar to Steve as his own, and the full lips that tend towards pouty, sulky shapes, and in it all the brightness of his eyes, a pale blue beneath the fluorescent lighting of the bathroom. Bucky is beautiful and familiar, despite the horribly dark shadows under his eyes, and the new lines of pain and exhaustion and nightmare memories carved into his face.

“You look good,” Steve tells Bucky, and represses other, less honourable thoughts that come to mind as Bucky’s mouth curves into a tentative grin, and he pushes a hand through his hair, preening a little as he stares at himself in the mirror.

Steve keeps catching himself staring at Bucky over the course of the next few days as clean-shaven turns to stubble, before Bucky asks him to help him shave again. This time Bucky does it while Steve hovers nervously beside him, uneasy about letting Bucky have a blade so near his own throat. There is not a single nick though; Bucky’s hands sniper-steady, and his drags of the razor careful and calculated.

Steve helps smooth the aftershave over Bucky’s cheeks afterwards, and Bucky’s skin is smooth and warm, his bones sharp beneath. And Bucky’s eyes linger on Steve's face, drifting over him almost clinically, and yet there's a frisson between them that seems anything but clinical. As if all the air has been sucked out of the room. And they are standing so close – so damn close, and Bucky is _right there_ with that curious tilt to his head, and that calm interest in his eyes, and Steve has to bite down his tongue hard to stifle the need to press his mouth greedy-soft to Bucky's. He hurries guilty out of the bathroom as soon as he’s packed up the shaving kit, berating himself for having such inappropriate thoughts, telling himself firmly that it hadn't been _interest_ in Bucky's pale eyes. He is seeing things that aren’t there.

* * *

Three days later, Bucky remembers killing an entire family in ‘82 – husband, wife, two children, and a dog – and burning the house down with their bodies inside. He spends four days in the bathroom, huddled in the shower stall in a near catatonic state, and it seems like any progress they've made in getting Bucky back since coming to the cabin is stolen away by the Winter Soldier's memories. The meagre progress of weeks of patience and perseverance on both their parts is ripped away, and Bucky is reduced to an unstable, shaking mess who Steve can’t trust alone. Who won’t talk to Steve but only mumbles half-nonsense to himself. Who won’t bathe or eat, and who barely drinks enough to avoid dehydration. Steve spends the entire time on suicide watch, only daring to sleep a little less than twelve hours in total, in snatches of a couple of hours here and there, and only after sedating Bucky.

On the fourth day, Bucky stares up at Steve with red-rimmed, swollen eyes, and rubs his hand over his prickly jaw. There is sanity in his eyes again, fragile and raw. "I suppose you'd better shave me," he says, holding up his hands palm down in the air to show how they tremble like an old man’s. He grins lopsided. "I don't think I'm up to the job."

Steve lets out a gusty, wobbling sigh and slides weakly down to sit on the shower stall floor beside Bucky. He leans his head onto Bucky’s shoulder, thoughtless of his fragile state, and grabs Bucky’s metal hand in his own. Bucky just sighs too and rests his head against the top of Steve’s, his fingers wrapping tight around the other man’s; cool metal that slowly begins to lose its chill under Steve’s touch. Bucky smells like old sweat, and his breathing comes unsteady and hitching, and he radiates a bone-deep cold that sucks the warmth out of Steve, but Steve thinks that this feels like bliss anyway. After days of fear and strain, there is finally a reprieve. They sit together for a long time; until their breathing settles into a steady sync, and Bucky’s metal hand is warmed, and Steve feels a little less like he wants to break down into quiet weeping. 

When he gets up eventually, Steve finds that his hands are too shaky too. It isn’t until the next day that he carefully scrapes away the beard from Bucky’s face again. Once he has done so, Bucky stands there staring at Steve with placid eyes, familiar and beautiful and lost, and Steve clamps down on a sobbing breath and presses their foreheads together for five beats of his heart, eyes shut and hand cradling the back of Bucky’s neck. Bucky allows it without protest, but his arms remain slack at his sides. He is like a life-sized doll, and the thought sends the creeps shivering down Steve's spine. He hates it when Bucky is pliable and empty like this, hates it more than he hates the anguish and the violence that come surging out of Bucky at times.

“Love you pal,” Steve says rough and low, trying to make a small, affectionate smirk hover at his lips as he straightens. He doesn’t want to muddle in any confusing, inappropriate feelings – Steve loves Bucky as his best friend, as the kid he grew up with, and the man he fought beside, and he always will. Anything else is not Bucky’s problem. It’s not and Steve will _not_ put that on him, but he still loves him in other ways - far more important ways. Bucky blinks, and bites his lip.

“I don’t – I don’t know…I do know – he loved you too, Steve,” he says at last very quietly, staring down at his hands – silver and flesh twisting together nervously, and it’s like a knife between Steve’s ribs, even though he knows – _should_ know that Bucky can’t say anything like that. Not when he doesn’t even know who he is properly; how can he know how he feels about Steve when he doesn’t remember even a quarter of the memories that they’d made together, in Brooklyn and in Europe. Can't remember the experiences that seeded that love, and made it grow into something that bound them together inextricably. But still, hearing Bucky speak like that - in the past tense, in the third person – it hurts.

“James…don’t. Just. It’s fine. I don’t expect…”

“I trust you,” Bucky says softly, eyes flicking up to Steve’s as if to check if it’s okay for him to admit that. He smiles small and cautious, a fragile bloom of hope writ on his haggard face, and Steve’s heart wrenches hard.

“That’s…that’s great, James,” he says in a choked tone and means it with all of him, all spilling over with earnestness and a bittersweet kind of happiness. Steve grins then, unsteadily, reaching out and squeezing Bucky’s shoulder affectionately. “That’s really, _really_ great.” Bucky looks down at the floor between them, shrugging a shoulder with a painful sort of diffidence.

"I remember...enough to trust. But even if I didn't remember, I'd...I'd probably still trust you, Steve. You're..." Bucky draws in a sharp breath and cuts himself off, biting his lip as he flicks nervous eyes over Steve, an accidental rakish kind of charm to him as he shoves his hair back off his face with his right hand. "...Good," he finishes, eyes bright and lips damp and flushed from the pink tongue he sweeps over them, and they are standing so close that if Steve just. swayed. forward. his mouth would press against Bucky's. Steve thinks he knows how it would feel. Like life; all heat and pain and desperate insistence, and the pleasure of seizing and giving and helpless surrender. Steve swallows around the lump in his throat, blood thrumming. He sways back, steps back, looks away from the man who wears his best friend's face, who is draped in tatters of memory, whose reddened mouth is a damned beacon.

"So are you, James," Steve tells this echo who stands before him -  fever-blue eyes and newly smooth cheeks, a little smear of shaving cream just beneath the hinge of his jaw. Steve reaches out and thumbs it away before he can stop himself, and Bucky's pulse thuds hard against the callused pad of Steve's thumb before he pulls back, absently showing the smudge of cream in explanation. Bucky stares not at the shaving cream but wide-eyed at Steve's face, motionless and yet quivering with tension. "You're good too," he tells Bucky, and the ghost/echo/friend flattens his lips and looks away. His eyes go dull and his jaw is set, and Steve curses his stupid mouth, blurting out reminders of things best left unsaid. "None of it was your fault. None of it. Ever," Steve says urgently, needing the other man to believe him, but even as he says the words he knows they will mean nothing to Bucky, and his heart slowly sinks. Weariness swamps him again, making his shoulders slump and his limbs feel heavy and numbed.

Steve cannot see a light at the end of the tunnel; it dies with the light in Bucky's eyes, and the darkness is bleak and large. For a moment he knows he can't go on. But then.

"Come on," he says, forcing the words out with a thick tongue, forcing a smile to his lips. "You must be hungry."

* * *

They eat canned spaghetti on toast in silence. Bucky's hair hangs around his face in lank straggles, but his cheeks and jaw are smooth like they used to be, and Steve can't stop staring, and wishing. Wishing that they were somewhere else, in another time, back when they both knew who they were. Steve forks down mouthfuls of spaghetti without tasting it; shoulders hunched and eyes fixed on the man opposite, feeling Bucky slip further and further away from him.

* * *

 


	7. Part 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so, so, so much for all the feedback! I appreciate it immensely <3

* * *

 Pt 7

"You used to draw - sketch n' paint 'n things," Bucky says, voice rusty from disuse. He's been quieter than usual the past five days, and Steve's attempts to draw him out have been unsuccessful. This is the first time Bucky's spoken today, and according to the StarkTab Steve holds, it's just gone 11:47am. They've sat in silence in the small cabin's main room all morning; Steve on his StarkTab and Bucky staring blankly at a paperback book. He's been turning pages now and then, but Steve is pretty sure he's not reading. The sound of Bucky's voice sends a whiplash of faint, warm relief sinking through Steve, dispelling more tension than he'd realised he felt.

"I did." Steve shifts on the couch to face Bucky, setting his back against the armrest and folding one leg up under him on the couch. The StarkTab slides forgotten to his lap as he fixes his attention on Bucky, whose eyes haven't lifted from his book. "Sketches mostly - ma could never afford paints, and then later on, neither could I. But I always had a pencil and a sketchbook to scribble in. I'd draw anything that struck me as...worth preserving."

He grins lopsided as a vivid memory snares him; a hot July afternoon when Bucky'd stripped off his shirt on the shaded fire escape and sprawled on the metal grating in just his suspenders and pants, one leg bent and an arm flopped over his eyes. He'd told Steve to do the same to cool off, but Steve was scrawny and pasty then, not lean and olive-skinned like Bucky, and he'd shaken his head 'no' self-consciously. Steve had settled on the windowsill instead, with his back to the frame and sketchbook on his lap. Bucky had looked so vital, well-formed and bursting with life even lolling lazy in the shade, and without even thinking about it, Steve had started to sketch out the shape of him.

_"What ya scribblin', Stevie?" Bucky mumbles in the melting, easy silence between them. Steve tenses, feeling suddenly a bit awkward about the scene taking shape on the paper_

_"...just, um, drawin' you actually. I - I need to practice drawing people. Proportions an' such," Steve hurries to justify, staring at what he has on paper so far with quiet pleasure - he can see Bucky in it already, in the shade and light and lines. Bucky, brought to life caught in the paper._

_"Well, I guess I make for a damn fine model, good-lookin' fella like me," Bucky says, grinning wide and rolling his head to look at Steve, eyes sparkling with that self-confidence that somehow never tips over to arrogance - always tempered by the sense that he's poking fun at himself, just a little. It's that quality, Steve thinks, that makes Buck so magnetic to everyone. To Steve._

_Aloud he says, "Hey! Hold still ya mook, you're ruining it. This is why I never bother drawin' ya. You can't keep still even when you're tryin'."_

_"You draw me all the time, Steve."_

_"But they never get finished properly, because ya always move before I'm finished," Steve shoots back, grinning. "Jerk."_

_"Punk," Bucky responds automatically, lazy lopsided smile, as he lies there sprawled out in the July summer, so real and shiningly vivid that he seems brighter than the scorching sun they have taken shelter from._

Silence stretches out, filling the room uncomfortably. Steve guesses Bucky's about used up his words for the day and lifts the tablet again with weary resignation - but blue eyes rise uncertainly to Steve's face, waiting for more. A sense of warmth sparks in Steve's chest at the sight of the open curiosity in Bucky's face.

"I used to draw you all the time," Steve says quietly, lost in memories. "You could never keep still unless you were asleep."

"You drew me when I was asleep." It's said like a statement but Steve knows Bucky means it to be a question. Bucky's curious gaze is unblinking on Steve; wide and childlike, and he looks very young. Steve flushes hot, the other man's words feeling like an accusation, an exposure.

"Sometimes, yeah. During the war," Steve admits, other memories swirling up to the surface, of small tents and sleeping cramped together for warmth and comfort, just like they had back home, and Bucky's face, relaxed and young in sleep. Long eyelashes casting spidery shadows on Bucky's skin by the moonlight, a smudge of dirt at his temple looking like a bruise, drooling onto the rolled up jacket that his face is smushed into for a pillow. "The Smithsonian actually has one of my sketchbooks on display. They offered - reluctantly - to return it to my possession when I woke up, but...I didn't need it in order to remember, and I - I kinda just wanted to forget."

"Peggy," Bucky says, pulling his knees up to his chest and wrapping his arms around them, hair falling around his face like curtains. Steve understands, nodding.

"That's right. They keep it open to a sketch of Peggy. You saw it, huh?"

"Yeah."

"There's one of you on the next page." Just rough, dark lines carved into the paper blurred here and there by once-damp splotches, grief and anger evident in every slash. It is the last picture in the book, the last time that Steve put pencil to paper before he went into the ice. And he hasn't drawn anything since, he realizes absently. It hasn't been a deliberate decision; he just...hasn't. Steve hasn't wanted to draw what he has lost, what is past - since he awoke he had wanted to deny, forget, repress. Afraid, perhaps, that if he started drawing all the old places and faces, he would never be able to stop. And there had been nothing in the present that had moved him to draw, nothing worth preserving.

Until now.

Until Bucky, sitting there at the end of the couch and holding out a pencil and a notebook he'd procured from god only knew where, a shy smile playing at his lips. Bucky thrusts the notebook and pencil toward Steve insistently, but there's uncertainty and fear caught in his eyes as he speaks. "Draw me? I - I swear I'll be still. Please?" Bucky's voice is small and halting, as though speaking is alien and painful. Steve's chest ratchets tight and a lump lodges in his throat, tears burning behind his eyes. He reaches out and takes the notebook and pencil, fingers brushing against Bucky's.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'll draw ya, Bu- James." He catches himself just as Bucky flinches at the expectation of the name, and silence soaks heavy into the air for a moment. Steve clears his throat and brings the notebook into his lap, flipping the book open and smoothing the paper flat with the side of his hand. "Of _course_ I'll draw you. Just...sit there. Relax. Just relax. Okay?" He smiles at Bucky tentative and trying to be reassuring, and some of the terrible stiffness goes out of Bucky’s posture.

Bucky sinks back down, slouching into the couch and ducking his head. His legs drawn up, knees bent and his hands tucked together in his lap, hair falling forward to half hide his face. He looks like a lost little boy, his eyes fixed on Steve, filled with something that Steve can't capture, at first. Fear, love, self-loathing, and confusion, all tangled together in a mess that makes Steve's heart hurt, and he commits it to the lined paper in faint, reluctant strokes. He gets lost in the drawing. Wanting to get it perfect but hating the expression on Bucky's face, the hunched withdrawal in his posture, flinching away from putting it to paper. He tears out the first three attempts, crumpling the sheets and tossing them to the floor.

When he looks up from sketching out the lines of Bucky's side on the fourth attempt, he sees with a soft smile that he'll have to start again. Nostalgia rises sharp in him, echoes of the past, memories overwhelming as he looks at Bucky; fast asleep, slumped sideways against the couch back, legs still drawn up a little but no longer defensive and tense, features slack and peaceful in sleep. Drooling a little. Hands drawn up, twined together and tucked under Bucky's chin. Steve smiles and smiles and ignores the pain in his chest and the burgeoning tears and draws Bucky in swift, careful strokes, and for a while everything falls away and it's just them.

* * *

It's a balm to Steve's soul, that quiet afternoon with Bucky sleeping heavy on the couch, and it sustains him for a while through the days that come after. The hard, bad days, filled with despair and hopelessness. And then there are good days too, mixed in there. Days when Bucky smiles, or remembers something good, or expresses the desire to do something positive - like the time they try to bake a cake, and it comes out burnt at the edges and delicious,  and they eat it together in one sitting, Bucky exuding something that for a brief time feels like contentment. But mostly, there are bad days, and worse days, and days where Steve calls Sam and has to choke back his tears, and Sam tells him to _come back_ , and Steve has to say _no_ , even though he wishes so damn badly he could.

He feels so tired. Like he is only a shadow of himself. He is thinner from lack of self-care, too busy looking after Bucky, and he's grown a short, scruffy beard because shaving is the last thing he has the energy for. His clothes are all marked by old blood stains from…incidents, and half of them are torn in places from their explorations through the surrounding forest. He is worn away to nearly nothing, with bags under his eyes and nightmares in his sleep, and always, always, walking on eggshells around Bucky. But he can't set down his burden, he can't take a break, he can't go back to the Tower, because Bucky needs him, and Bucky doesn't want to go back.

And all that sustains Steve are those small moments, strewn sparing through a sea of awfulness. Bucky sleeping peacefully. His fingers curling around Steve's at night. The wild, carefree expression on Bucky's face as he stands on the edge of the sheer cliff he's just scaled. The shy smile he gives Steve when Steve makes him a stack of pancakes drowning with maple syrup for dinner once. The little sounds of laughter that fizz out of him when they watch funny YouTube videos together on the good nights. Waking up in the night after a nightmare about the train and Bucky falling, and lying there listening to Bucky breathing. Alive.

So he forces himself to go on, because he promised: ‘til the end of the line.

* * *

It all shatters with a quiet finality one cloudy afternoon, while Steve is frying up some hamburger patties for lunch. Bucky is slouched on a stool at the breakfast bar, elbows on the countertop and hands idly fiddling with a ballpoint pen, watching Steve with bloodshot, tear-swollen eyes. It was a bad night - a _really_ bad night - but so far the morning has been better, and Steve has some hope that today could be one of the good ones. Steve glances over at Bucky with a cautious smile as he slices tomatoes with quick, sure movements, half an eye on the sizzling patties. "Do you want bacon on yours, Buck?"

Tension clogs the room immediately, and the silence is oppressive. Steve curses silently. It's been days and days since he's slipped up last, he was doing so _well_ , and now he's slipped he may as well forget his hope that today would be a good one. Bucky still reacts…badly, to being referred to like that.

"I'm not him," Bucky grinds out through bared teeth. "I'm not him, and I never fucking will be him again, so why can't you _stop calling me that?_   I'm not him! _I'm not him he's dead I'm not him!_" He drops the pen on the counter with a clatter and pushes to his feet, panting and furious, chest and shoulders heaving with his frantic gasps for breath, human hand shoving through his hair in short, panicky motions. "I don't know _you_ , I don't even know _myself_ \- I don't know _anything_ except that I’m _broken_ and that _I'm_ _not your fucking Bucky Barnes._ "

Steve breaks, then. There are no excuses, and no explanations, he thinks later. He just… _breaks_.

"Why _can't_ you be?" he asks suddenly, bitterly, driving the point of the knife deep into the chopping board with a sharp, angry motion and rounding on Bucky - James - the stranger he loves - with tears pricking in his eyes. "Why can't you just fucking _be him?_ I try and I try and I try and - I - _nothing changes_." The tears start falling; rolling down his cheeks unheeded, as he stares feverish and pleading at the man across the counter. "I don't expect you to get perfectly well, I don't expect you to - to ever be exactly who you were, and I don't even want you to be, but _please_ I need to know I'm _helping_ ," he begs Bucky, who stares at him white-faced and frozen, eyes wide and lips trembling, _terrified_ , but Steve doesn't notice through his own desperation. "I need to know I'm doing the right things. That - that you're getting better. Even just a _little._ Because I can't do _this_ forever. We can't _stay here_ forever. I can't-"

There's a choked sob. Steve stops and stares at Bucky and really _sees_ him. There's another raw, ragged sob, as Bucky stares at Steve with tears streaking down his own cheeks, breath hitching as another sob shakes him, and then he's crying in great gasps, sinking gracelessly to the floor as though his legs have given out. Steve is stricken. What has he _done?_ Bucky covers his face with his hands and curls into himself, shoulders shaking as he sobs, wretched and lost. "Oh god." Steve rounds the counter at a stumbling run, feeling numbed and stupid and wracked with guilt atop his bone-deep weariness. "Oh Jesus Christ, James, _James_. I shouldn't have said that." He drops to his knees beside the broken wreck of a man that _he_ is responsible for hurting, and he feels like the worst kind of monster.

“I didn’t mean it.” Steve gulps, praying that he hasn’t destroyed things with those awful, wounding words. One damn moment of weakness and he may have set back the tiny amount of progress he’s made and _more_. “I didn’t mean it, James.”

“You _did_. I fuckin’ well _know_ that you did, Stevie,” Bucky gets out, clutching at his own hair with rough hands, curled in on himself and blocking Steve out. Ironically, Bucky sounds more like himself than he has in a while – that Brooklyn accent strong, and the way he called Steve _Stevie_ , with a catch of emotion in his voice, broke Steve’s heart. “You _did_ , and I can’t fuckin’ blame you either.”

“No. _No_.” Steve is desperate to right the damage he’s done, sickened and cold to the bone with horror. He gently places his hands over Bucky’s, curling his fingers over top of the other man’s, trying to coax him to let go of his hair. “No, I didn’t mean it, J-James. I was just…tired. Tired and scared, and worried that I’m doing the wrong thing staying out here without therapists and whatever the hell else people keep saying you need, and worried about _you_ because you are everything, James, and I need to know that you’re going to get better. I don’t care _who_ you are or what you remember, I just want you to be…better. Happier. Adjusting.” Steve manages to draw Bucky’s hands down from his hair, tangling his fingers in the other man’s as he kneels before him, silently begging Bucky to believe him. He should have listened to Sam.

Bucky looks up at him, blue eyes rimmed with red and sunk in shadows; exhausted and hopeless, full of defeat. “You need to take me back, Steve. You – you need to take me in.” Steve stares at him helplessly, shaking his head _no_ , even though he knows perfectly well that Bucky is right, just as Sam was right. He can’t keep doing this on his own. He’s not alone, and he needs to stop acting like it. He has _friends_. People he can trust.

“But you don’t want to.”

“No. I don’t. I don’t…trust. I don’t…” Bucky is clearly anxious just thinking of the possibility of going back home, to the country he was born in, the place he only remembers in bits and pieces like glimpses in a shattered mirror. He swallows hard, dark hair falling forward around his face, lips pressing together and fingers tightening brutally on Steve’s, the metal hand grinding the bones in Steve’s hand. His cheeks are ashen, and his nostrils flare as he drags in short, panicky breaths. “I don’t _trust_ -” Steve shuffles closer, hushing Bucky, tugging his hands free and cautiously wrapping his arms around the other man’s shoulders, his cheek resting against the top of Bucky’s head.

“We don’t have to,” he tells Bucky, and Bucky presses in closer to Steve, breathing slow and deep, clearly trying to calm himself, a technique Steve had read about on the internet, which was supposed to help cope with anxiety attacks. He had found _some_ resources that were useful, and Sam had sent him links to more websites that had helped Steve cope, and in turn try to help Bucky. He wishes they had helped more than they had. “We can just stay here. We don’t _have_ to go.”

“Really?” Bucky asks after a long pause filled with his breathing, and his tone is more disbelieving than panicky. It’s the tone of voice that says Steve is talking shit, and Bucky knows it. Steve sighs, and rephrases as he rubs Bucky’s back soothing and firm.

“We don’t have to, but maybe – maybe it might be best. Maybe it might help you, James.” Bucky is silent, and Steve goes on. He thinks he’s trying to convince both of them that going is a good idea – he’s not any happier about it than Bucky is. Steve sure as hell doesn’t want Bucky to be within reach of the US government, or in the same country as Hydra, and the remnants of S.H.I.E.L.D. He doesn’t care that Stark tower is probably as safe as anywhere in the world could be; it doesn’t make the idea _feel_ any more okay. But it’s clear now that he can’t go on like this. Even _he_ has his limits. Bucky is quiet in Steve’s arms as he continues, and he can feel the other man’s tension slowly ebbing out of his muscles. “We won’t go through any official channels – to hell with that. We’d go on a private jet to Tony’s building – Tony’s a friend of mine, an Avenger. Iron Man.” Steve doesn’t bring up the fact that Tony is really Anthony Stark, because he doesn’t want to trigger Bucky if he can avoid it.

“I know,” Bucky whispers, extricating himself from Steve, and sitting back against the base of the breakfast bar, knees drawing up to his chest and arms wrapping loosely around them. He looks small and uncertain, but ready to listen.

“He’s a friend. He’s _safe_. He would never hurt either of us. He’s even brought in some medical equipment that prob’ly cost the earth, which might help in figuring out what’s going on with you. Nothing that you have to use,” he hastens to add as Bucky stiffens and stares at him with betrayal blooming in his eyes. “I will never force you to do anything you don’t want to. Unless it’s to stop you from hurting yourself or someone else, okay?” Bucky looks uncertain about that, but he nods slowly, and Steve goes on, telling Bucky all about the Avengers. Like a children’s fairy tale - the motley group of so-called heroes, who are all ready and willing to welcome Bucky into their odd little family, of sorts. Who will give him shelter and protect him from the outside, and see that he gets the help he needs. And Bucky listens as though it’s a fairy tale – unbelievable and magical, and out of his reach. Just a fantasy.

“But you don’t have to, James,” Steve finishes at last, with a reassuring smile, shifting position so that he sprawls along the floor in front of Bucky’s feet, resting on one elbow. Bucky eyes him uncertainly, hugging his legs tighter and resting his chin on one knee.

“Maybe I want to,” he mumbles from behind a straggling veil of hair. Bucky’s scared, Steve knows that, but the other man also knows he shouldn't be, and wants to do what he thinks is the right thing. It makes Steve’s chest ache. Even now, Bucky is trying to look out for Steve. But maybe it _will_ help Bucky even more than it helps take some of the weight and the worry off Steve, for them to go stay at the tower – to have all those resources, and all that specialised support available.

“ _Do_ you?”

Bucky shrugs, hunching in on himself. “I don’t know.” He sits back and picks at a loose thread on his pants knee with his metal fingers, mouth set in a half-pout and eyes shadowed. He’s silence for a long time before he speaks again – searching for words, Steve thinks. “I trust you Stevie. But I don’t trust them. But…but I want to – to sort my fucking’ head out. To be able to _think_ again. To _remember_. To…” Steve silences him with a gentle hand on Bucky’s.

“I tell you what, pal,” Steve says, as the idea coalesces in his mind. “Tomorrow we’ll video call them, and you can say hi to whoever’s home, and check the place out. If you feel all right about it, we could start talking about going. And if you _don’t_ want to go, we’ll…well, we’ll stay here and see if you can video conference or whatever they call it with a therapist, instead.” It feels _right_ as he suggests it, and when Bucky flashes a tentative, lopsided smile and nods, it feels as though a crushing weight has been lifted off Steve’s chest. “Good. That’s good, James.” A beat, then: “…Can you smell that?”

“The meat’s burning,” Bucky says helpfully, and Steve swears and leaps up while Bucky grins, pressing a hand over his mouth to stifle his rusty laughter.

* * *

 


End file.
